Blog

A quiet shift is happening

Over the past few years, most conversations around contract hiring have been dominated by IR35, compliance, and how businesses adapt to it. That hasn’t gone away. But underneath that, there’s been a quieter shift — particularly in high-end engineering environments.

More organisations are starting to move back towards PAYE-based contractor models.

Not across the board, and not always deliberately. But it’s happening often enough to be noticeable. And in many cases, it’s not being driven by policy, but by what actually works in practice.

The assumption is usually complexity

In most high-end engineering environments, delays are typically put down to complexity. Tight tolerances, evolving specifications, integration challenges, supply chain disruption — all the usual suspects tend to take the blame. And to be fair, those things do cause problems. But increasingly, they’re not the reason projects are slipping. More often than not, the issue is something much simpler, and slightly less comfortable to acknowledge: the right people aren’t in place when they’re needed.

With the UK's commitment to a net-zero target set for 2050, transport and heavy industry are exploring ways they can reduce their carbon emissions and one option is a transition to carbon-neutral fuels. 

Hydrogen energy promises a cleaner solution to the world's transportation issues seeking to move away from the climate-polluting effects of fossil fuels. From cars to trains, hydrogen is a buzzword for the transport industry, but how close are we?

Getting school children interested and engaged in STEM subjects remains challenging. Perceived difficulty and a lack of engagement with the job opportunities mastery of STEM subjects potentially provides are key issues when encouraging pupils down the STEM route. The ramifications for the future growth of the UK economy and our place on the world stage as leaders in technology innovation are at stake. The Greenpower Education Trust is taking a practical approach to the challenge by giving pupils the opportunity to engage with engineering disciplines in action.