Reducing levels of sickness in the workplace focus of conference

By Staff Reporter
The majority of engineering students at the University of Ulster are finding that industrial placements can greatly enhance their long-term career prospects.
All undergraduate courses in the School of Engineering offer students a period of industrial placement during the third year of their degree programme.
According to a recent survey, 90 per cent of the students found their placement experience was either ‘well up to’, ‘beyond’ or ‘far beyond’ their expectation.
And 97 per cent of students returning from placement said they were either ‘generally’, ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ satisfied with their overall placement experience.
The survey found that up to two-thirds of students in the School of Engineering returned to university after industrial placement with either a definite job offer on graduation, sponsorship in their final year or an indication of interest in employment on graduation by their placement provider.
Ron Laird, industrial placement coordinator in the School of Engineering, says this high level of satisfaction among students is down to a number of factors.
“The School of Engineering has established an excellent network of contacts with leading local companies in Northern Ireland, multi-national companies operating in Northern Ireland as well as companies in the Republic, Britain and overseas.
“All the placements are managed through Opus (Online Placement University System) – a professionally developed web-based system to search for placements and manage all aspects for students, companies and staff.
“Opus, which was designed and developed in the School of Engineering, has proved so successful that it is now being considered by many universities in the Republic, Britain and overseas as the means to manage their placements.”
Mr Laird said that many companies in the north are now looking to ‘engineering@Ulster’ when trying to recruit high-quality applied engineers for placements and graduate employment opportunities.
“Companies concerned about their future recruitment of engineers are looking to engineering@Ulster for their graduate engineers because of their excellent experience with our students on placements and Ulster’s reputation as an educator of genuine applied engineers,” he said.
n Prospective students interested in learning more about career opportunities in engineering should visit www.compeng.ulster.ac.uk.

The wheel in the jobs goes...

By Staff Reporter
Employment and learning minister Sir Reg Empey is joined by Jeff Hagan, HR manager at Bombardier, Anne Corey, HR manager at Marks and Spencer, and Malachy Toner, general manager of Wellington Park Hotel to promote a forthcoming jobs fair to be held at the Baby Grand, Grand Opera House, Belfast next Wednesday.
More than 25 employers will be attending the event which runs from 11am until 8pm.

Minister backs empowerment of women

Barriers which inhibit the progress of women in helping to shape Northern Ireland must be removed, junior minister Jeffrey Donaldson said yesterday.
They had to have an equal opportunity to participate in designing and developing a progressive and settled society he said in an address to the Women in Local Councils – Making a Difference meeting at Hillsborough Castle.
The event celebrated the success of the Local Government Staff Commission in raising the profile of women in local government.
Mr Donaldson recalled that in 2006 the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister published a Gender Equality Strategy which had among its aims ensuring active and equal participation of women and men at all levels of society.
“Women must be empowered to develop and participate in areas of society which previously excluded them,” he said.
“It is imperative that we embrace all initiatives which seek to redress the imbalance of the past.
“We must endeavour to seek a change in attitudes to ensure that the current issue of under-representation of women in public life is remedied, to enable women to achieve their full potential and make a difference.”

Workers in a number of government departments and agencies across Britain and Northern Ireland may have to be given an emergency pay rise to lift their earnings above the new national minimum wage rate, a union claimed yesterday.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said the revelation highlighted the “shamefully low” pay levels of civil servants.
It came as the new minimum wage adult rate of £5.73 an hour came into effect.
The British government’s public sector pay policy was disproportionately hitting some of the lowest-paid in the public sector and leading to pay freezes and pay cuts, the PCS said.
The union has held a series of strikes this year, hitting job centres, passports, immigration and coastguards across Britain and the north.
The union is balloting its 270,000 civil servants members working for government departments, agencies and related bodies, over the policy of capping public sector pay below inflation.
General secretary Mark Serwotka, said: “It is shameful that government departments and agencies may have to give low-paid staff an emergency pay rise to lift their earnings above the new national minimum wage.
“This sorry state of affairs underlines the endemic problem of low pay across civil and public services, which is being made worse by the government’s public sector pay cap.”