The engineer of the 21/sup st/ century [professional engagement]

This paper presents the results of an IET study that aimed to assess the engineering community´s professional engagement (PE) factor, defined as the way engineers engage with their colleagues, their organizations and other organizations within the industry. PE benefits include the breadth of skills and experience a company can gather from improved communication, the ability to avoid known pitfalls thanks to historical knowledge, strengthening staff commitment and giving them better job satisfaction, and building shareholder value for the long term. With participants from across different engineering professions, the study revealed a lack of joined-up thinking among engineers that hampers innovation among other things. It also identified the barriers to PE to be lack of time, cost factors and lack of company support. Conducting informal meetings with staff members as well as industry counterparts to openly discuss issues on PE are highly recommended to make it more commonplace.