GlobalSpec-2019年工程师报告（英文）30页

2019 Pulse of Engineering Survey Summary

Core Content

The 2019 Pulse of Engineering Survey, conducted by IEEE GlobalSpec, provides an in-depth look at the evolving work environment, challenges, and career aspirations of engineers across various industries. The survey gathered responses from 2,180 engineers, representing both Engineering360.com users and IEEE Spectrum subscribers. These engineers work in companies of all sizes, from small to large, and across a wide range of engineering disciplines.

Main Points

Work Environment

• Team Size: 65% of engineers work on design teams with five or fewer participants.
• Project Load: On average, engineers work on 3–5 projects at the same time.
• Tools Used: The top tools for project completion include technical documentation, software and development tools, product specification data, and datasheets.

Performance Measurement

• Key Metrics: Product quality and customer service/satisfaction are the most commonly cited performance targets.
• Customer Service Importance: Customer service has become increasingly significant as a performance metric over the years.
• Meeting Targets: Engineers are most likely to meet product quality targets, followed by customer satisfaction and launch dates.

Challenges and Competition

• Work Pressure: Engineers report that the pace of engineering is constantly increasing, and they are required to do more with less.
• Design Complexity: 78% of engineers agree that designs are becoming more complex and sophisticated.
• Time-to-Market Pressures: 67% of engineers agree there are more time-to-market pressures, and 63% believe design cycles are shrinking.
• Constraints: 71% of engineers feel that constraints on people and resources are jeopardizing their company's productivity, innovation, and product quality.
• Talent Shortage: 70% of engineers cite a shortage of talent and specialized knowledge as a challenge.

Knowledge Management

• Knowledge Loss: 61% of engineers consider knowledge/information loss due to employee departures as extremely or very important.
• Retention Practices: Only 51% of companies have formal practices in place to retain knowledge from senior employees.
• Millennials' Perspective: Millennials are more likely to struggle with accessing institutional knowledge without a mentor and believe all content should be free and open access.

Career Management

• Career Factors: Interesting work/projects, good work/life balance, and learning are the top career priorities for engineers.
• Career Change Motivations: The top reasons for leaving a current role include retirement, moving to a different company, and promotion to a senior role.
• Skill Development: Engineers rely on colleagues, books, online training, webinars, and vendor training to maintain and advance their skills. Millennials are more likely to value video content for learning.

Millennials

• Company Size: A higher percentage of millennials work for smaller companies compared to seasoned engineers.
• Work-Life Balance: Millennials are more driven by work-life balance, learning, and growth potential.
• Pace of Engineering: Millennials are more likely to believe the pace of engineering is constantly increasing.
• Budget and Hiring Trends: Millennials report more budget increases and new hires in their companies, and are less likely to see cost-cutting as a threat to product quality.
• Content Preferences: Millennials prefer free and open access to all content and are less willing to register for specific documents.

Key Information

• Resilience of Engineers: Despite challenges, engineers are resilient and meet their top performance targets (product quality and customer satisfaction) 85% and 82% of the time, respectively.
• Content Importance: Engineers rely heavily on technical content for their work, including documentation, product data, and datasheets.
• Talent Retention: The loss of senior employees due to retirement is a growing concern, with 40% of companies experiencing increased losses.
• Marketing Implications: Industrial marketers should focus on understanding and engaging with millennial engineers, providing free content, and offering solutions that help engineers manage workload and improve productivity.

Recommendations

• Engage Millennials: Understand the preferences of younger engineers, such as a focus on learning and work-life balance, and provide content in formats they prefer, like video.
• Address Workload Pressures: Highlight how your solutions can help engineers manage resource constraints, reduce time-to-market pressures, and improve efficiency.
• Promote Content Accessibility: Make content easy to access and ensure that it provides unique value to justify registration or premium access.
• Invest in Knowledge Management: Develop formal practices to retain and transfer knowledge, especially as senior employees retire.
• Enhance Communication: Build relationships by collecting only essential contact information on registration forms and offering relevant, valuable content over time.

Conclusion

The 2019 Pulse of Engineering Survey highlights a rapidly changing engineering landscape, driven by increasing complexity, global competition, and the need for continuous learning. Engineers are under pressure to perform while managing limited resources and time, and they rely heavily on high-quality, accessible content to support their work. Millennials, in particular, are shaping the future of the engineering workforce, emphasizing work-life balance, growth, and open access to information. Companies that adapt to these trends and invest in knowledge retention and content strategy will be better positioned to meet the needs of their engineering workforce.