Training and Employment
Emanuel Whittaker has a 175 year track record of employing, training and developing local people in order to further the businesses aims and objectives. We recognise that our employees are the lifeblood of the company and are by far our most important asset. For this reason we have invested our time and money into producing a qualified workforce from which our managers of the future can be identified and developed.
Training and development
Emanuel Whittaker are proud of our heritage for recruiting and developing local people, offering them a career and providing them with a skill. This has traditionally been through the apprenticeship route.
However, working in partnership with our various clients during the last five years, our entire trainee intake has been through a variety of locally based initiatives, many of which have been designed to target groups who have traditionally been under-represented within the construction industry. These have included:
- STEP into Construction and Youth Build;
- Entry into Employment (e2e);
- Building Foundations;
- Managed Exchange (Oldham MBC);
- Women and Work;
- Train to Gain;
- Exit to Work and
- New Deal.
Nonetheless, we still encourage apprenticeships and have the enviable claim that at any one time over the last 20 years at least 5% of our employees were undertaking apprenticeships.
Further training and development opportunities
As well as formal training all our site based employees hold an appropriate CSCS Card in their chosen trade. We have been awarded with the ‘Committed to CSCS – Platinum Award’ which evidences our commitment to developing a competent workforce. Furthermore, over 65% of our staff are qualified to NVQ2 or above, compared to the industry average of just 22%. Staff receive an average of 4 days training per year, and undergo annual appraisals to agree annual training plans. In recognition of all that we do as a company to encourage the development of our employees we were first awarded the ‘Investors in People’ standard in 2004.
Targeting local people and addressing under-representation
We continue to work with local schools and colleges to raise awareness of the opportunities within the industry and our company. We have a bank of ‘Construction Ambassadors’ who have been trained to work with young people. Many of them are from sectors of the community that are traditionally under-represented within the industry, such as women and black and minority ethnic groups. They support work placements, offer mentoring, provide trade demonstrations and carry out mock interviews and other school initiatives within the areas we are working.
Investors in People
In recognition of all that we do as a company to encourage the development of our employees from this ‘Cradle to Grave’ approach, we achieved the ‘Investors in People’ standard in 2004, retained it in 2007 and have asked for re-assessment against the new improved standard in June 2012.