Closing The Engineering Skills Gap - With Parker Burke

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With Parker, the president, president of Fluke.
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Nice to meet you, Parker.
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How are you keeping?
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Yeah, well, appreciate you coming here and being with us this week.
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You know, we're we're a couple of days in, and you and I spent together, and it's been a great time already, and I'm excited about what's to come.
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Oh, honestly, I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Fort Leadership Day for me is always great takeaways.
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Coming in, speaking to industry professionals, and I get so much ideas out of that event in the day.
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So I think you've brought together such a great bunch of people to be able to talk about the industry and the things that we have to think about for the future.
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I think today's podcast for me is the main kind of talking point, is about the skills gap.
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Younger generations coming into engineering.
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I did a really good kind of workshop yesterday with some of the younger guys in Texas.
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They were great, by the way.
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What a great bunch of uh students.
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So shout out to them guys.
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And I've actually said to them guys, make sure you follow this podcast.
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I'm hoping they're gonna be watching this and all the rest of it.
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And one of the major themes yesterday was really around kind of how do we start to get the younger generation involved with engineering?
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We know we have a huge skills gap appearing already.
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I think it's under statistics to 2033.
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Is that we we need to move fast about how we get the guys involved?
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And was a major theme yesterday.
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You know, how do we start to really inspire that younger generation just to get involved with engineering?
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Because we don't really have enough people really interested now.
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So, how do we do that as a business and how do we also other companies have to play their part in doing this to solve this huge problem?
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Yeah, you know, I think that we saw yesterday, and you know, for the audience that, you know, Will and I got to spend time with Texas State Technical College.
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Some fantastic students uh from that school.
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So, you know, first off, I think that I think an eye-opener for many of the manufacturers in the room is the quality of the folks that are coming into the trades.
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And I think we saw that through engaging with these folks.
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What an amazing cross-section of people that we had the chance to interact with.
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Yeah, we had a gentleman who had a career as a medical doctor and had aspiration to go into the trades and own his own business.
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We had folks who were going to the trades after a decade of service in the military.
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And we had folks coming in straight out of high school.
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And I think that just shows the diversity of talent and experience on people that are coming into the trade.
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So that's number one.
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Number two, I think the opportunity we have as manufacturers, as trade schools in the industry to highlight the opportunity that jobs like this present to folks that are either coming into the workforce or looking for our career change.
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I was talking to one of the gentlemen this morning who was an A V technician on the A V staff in the room.
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And he stopped me, Dave.
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He stopped me and said, Perker, that was so.
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He was a good guy.
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I met him yesterday.
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Yeah, you booked me up.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that was so inspiring.
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I'm actually now having listened to that, I'm gonna look at.
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Oh, okay.
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So he may have a career too.
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I'm from Florida, I'm looking to get back to Florida.
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And just hearing that, how inspiring that was.
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And I think that again, another great lesson for me and all of us is when you evangelize and talk about what's possible.
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You can be a business owner, you can be control of your own destiny.
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You know, you can work anywhere in the world in a variety of industries having gone through the trades.
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And when young people hear that or people looking for a career change hear that, I think that's what's ultimately going to attract them into the space.
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I love that.
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Yeah, and I totally agree with the idea of look how vast this can be if you get trained within reliability or engineering.
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Look how many opportunities that that open up in your life and all the places you can go.
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I mean, I'm here in Austin, I've I've traveled out here and my work's taken me across the world, which is amazing.
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But we've got factories that, you know, it doesn't limit you to one city or one area or one location.
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And that's the attractive part.
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And I think that's a really good pull to get people in.
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But do you think we're doing enough to make people aware of how great this industry can be and how you know diverse the work can actually get in?
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Because while we still not seeing that adoption come in, do we have to be more vocal about it?
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Do we have to promote it?
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And I I get we have to evangelize and I love doing that.
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But do we need more people doing this to be able to spread?
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I think for sure.
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I think it again, a key lesson in learning for me was how many people you can touch just in those moments by talking about and showcasing the opportunity that people have in the trades.
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And again, ranging from I want to go be in control of my own destiny.
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I want to work on the hours that I want to work on as a technician working for a contracting company, whether it's I want to work in a great multinational business through the trades, or whether I want to own my own business, the landscape, the menu of opportunities is so broad.
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And I think the more that we can talk about that and showcase those opportunities, the better.
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That's great.
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Another question that I've got, and I'm not sure what it's like in the US, but this would be great for me to pick your brains, a kind of understand the educational system and understand how, you know, what are the schools doing in terms of early engineering adoption?
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Do you guys have any kind of like early engineering opportunities at school, or do they have to kind of like select that as a further career path to do that?
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And what can we do to even start to get that adoption even earlier?
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I mean, imagine if we had reliability engineers in schools and they could understand how to prevent failures and stuff like that.
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Do you think that would help the adoption as well so people understand what it is?
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Do you think people are coming into this a little bit too late to think they can make a difference?
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Yeah, I mean, I think in the United States, schools are evolving from, you know, what's been forever known as shop class, right?
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Yeah.
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You go and you learn how to work with your hands.
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Now schools have incredible STEM programs.
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Okay.
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Uh where, you know, the the opportunity is ranging from robotics to 3D printing to automation engagement and seeking to meet students where they're interested in expanding and furthering their careers.
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But I think the opportunity becomes how do we encourage those things?
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How do we make those things as engaging and frankly fun as possible?
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So that people who are interested in and eager to have a tendency to take things apart and put things back together, they see that and say, man, that's a place for me.
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That's a curiosity, isn't it?
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And I think that's where I think when I started, that was for me, it was just how does the world work?
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How does this work?
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How do we do that?
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And that curiosity was really kind of evident in the lads yesterday with what they wanted to do.
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They wanted to learn, they wanted to be able to be expansive.
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At Fluke, have you guys got anything like to be able to attract these guys in, if that makes sense, to be able to, because what a great bunch of guys they were yesterday.
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Do you guys have any kind of like, I wouldn't call it apprenticeships?
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Oh well, I suppose you you could call it an apprenticeship.
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Do you have any apprenticeships for the younger lad to go through in these programs at all?
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Where they come in, they're mentored to a state, and they really go through that roadmap of like here where we are now, and this is where we want to be after we've kind of gone through the training.
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Is anything at Fluke that you guys do anything like that here at all?
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Yeah, I mean, I would think it's two ways.
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You know, one at Fluke, you know, we have 10 factories around the world where we are also training and bringing in the next generation of the workforce.
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And, you know, we have a variety of internships, training programs, hiring from the military and other places where folks are coming in with some experience.
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We are seeking also to bring in the next generation of our workforce.
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And then also on the other side, you know, we are actively involved in participate in the training of the next generation of workforce.
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We're engaged with colleges, universities, technical schools across North America and around the world where we're ensuring that technicians have the latest and greatest equipment in their classroom so that they can train on a fluke instrument, whether it's a technician, whether it's an electrician, whether it's an engineer or a scientist, our products fit across that whole ganap.
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That's amazing.
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And at Fluke, you have such a wide product base, product offering.
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There's so many different products in your arsenal of all of the, you know, services also that you guys provide and everything.
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How do you not almost separate it, but we've got CM equipment, we've got alignment equipment, you've got multimeters, you've got acoustic equipment that we're seeing around the other day.
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How do we start to, because it's such a wide business model, how do you kind of wrap that underneath reliability and how do you attract people into them areas and how do you find the talent?
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Because it's such a wide, you know, skill set that you need.
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You know, thermal imaging is very different to vibration analysis, you know, ultrasound could be very different to electrical testing.
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Because you've got such a wide product base, how do you kind of promote and attract people to be able to see where they fit?
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Yeah, but I think it's, you know, our products are the are used by our customers.
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So if you look at some of the fastest growing industries in the world, the expansion of the data center infrastructure and ecosystem around the world is is accelerating at an incredible rate.
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And I think that's a great microcosm to think about how the fluke portfolio fits within the data center, whether it's our power quality equipment, whether it's our electrical testing equipment, whether it's our reliability equipment, all the way up to our calibration technologies.
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And if people want to go have successful careers in growing industries like that, their opportunity stretch across the fluke equipment set and their opportunity to work on the fluke equipment set is pre-brought.
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That's amazing.
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Yeah.
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How do you find your talent?
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Like, how do you find the right people?
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Because obviously, I've met so many great people at Fluke, and I've established some really great friendships actually with a lot of people here in the UK, you know, looking to use the equipment as well and try to be able to, you know, be a part of that family.
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But how do you find your talent at Fluke?
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How how do you find the the guys that are really going to push it forward?
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How do you do that?
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You know, I I think Fluke has a 78-year legacy of solving incredible problems for customers.
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I think we have a legacy of innovation and doing amazing things.
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And I look at today's workforce, it's becoming increasingly important for people to find meaning in the work that they do.
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You know, we spend so much time, so much of our lives is spent at work.
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And if our people are not feeling engaged and feeling like they're doing truly meaningful work for the world, then I think companies will have a hard time finding and attracting talent.
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And I think if you look at our fluke employees around the world, each of them can wake up in the morning, can look in the mirror and tell themselves, I really make a difference.
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Yeah.
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The work that I do, whether I'm manufacturing equipment, whether I'm servicing equipment, whether I'm designing the next generation of technologies, I can see my footprint and my impact on the world around me.
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So it's almost like a tract.
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Don't you don't need to find them if they're going to be attracted to that vision and that end goal of being a part of something bigger and a bigger why, really a part of what we've got.
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Some of the guys yesterday as well that we were talking to, they were so ambitious about where they wanted to go.
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But one of the main kind of themes around them wanting to be able to stay somewhere for the long term was support, mentorship, and feeling like they can make a difference.
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Is that difficult to do when you've got such a big organization?
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Again, I manage a team of 10.
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And for me to be able to give a time and attention to everyone, even with that small number, is quite difficult to do.
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How do you do that at fluke to make sure that because you've got such a big organization and how many employees roughly is it is it?
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4,500.
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That's that's that's it's a huge amount.
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How do you enable it to be a place where they don't feel like a number?
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Do you have to do anything special to be able to do that in terms of the culture of the Well, you know, I think that we we have an incredible team of managers around the world.
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And if you think about an employee, no matter where you sit in a company, you know, the person that you work for is the person that defines your experience with a business.
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You you can't be a great company unless you have great frontline managers.
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And I think about our frontline managers, our mentors, our talent developers, and all the countries we operate around the world, that is our lifeblood.
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And that's what's continues to make Fluke a credible place to go to work every day.
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If you were to give advice to them young lads yesterday, in terms of where you've been and your experience and where you are now, what advice would you give them so they can ensure that they find a place that they call their forever home?
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Yeah, first off, I would say be confident in the skills that they bring to a company.
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If I think about the new workforce coming in, they think in a different way.
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They have a higher capacity to do a lot of different things at one time.
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And as attention spans have changed and they become faster and quicker, what that's given is the current generation has such an ability to do so many things in multitask.
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There's no confidence in what they bring to an organization and the capacity that they have to bring to a team.
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And once they're on the team, you'll seek out opportunities to learn, to grow, to develop and do more and more things.
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Because you think about the frontline manager we just talked about, if they have an employee who's excited to come to work every day and asking to do more, you can't beat that.
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But that's a great employee, and that employee ultimately will have the opportunity to grow and develop.
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That's amazing.
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Thank you, Parker.
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Parker, this has been such a great, insightful conversation.
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I just want to thank you so much for coming in to be on the podcast.
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I'm loving what Fluke are doing.
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You've inspired me this week as well with a lot of your chats and everything like that.
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Fort Leadership Day was absolutely incredible.
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There's so much I can take away, even from, you know, for me to take to my business and to my people and to be able to do everything.
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I just want to say thank you very much for coming on.
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Any last words, Parker, for the podcast?
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Well, you know, well, I'd like to thank you for, you know, informing, engaging with, helping to educate and set up the next generation of the workforce for success.
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Because as we look to what's ahead in the world around us, we have some incredibly exciting opportunities.
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And we think about the next generation coming into the workforce, those are the folks who are going to unlock it for us.
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And I appreciate you engaging with them and helping bring them into, you know, a career that that we know and love and uh welcoming them to that same thing.
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The one thing I love about you, Parker, is your optimism and your positivity is opportunities, not challenges.
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That's what I love.
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So thank you so much for jumping on the podcast, Parker.
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So thanks well.