Like so many sectors, construction faces a yawning skills gap, at all levels, which has been made worse by a recession that loomed over the sector from the very start of the financial crisis. Learning and Development Manager, Paul Rigby at Forrest, looks at measures that his organisation are taking.

Managerial training, never the sector’s strong point, has been cut back alongside new apprenticeship places, while the number of people leaving university or higher education with the necessary skills has slowed to a trickle. For those firms which have been growing despite the downturn, of which my business, Forrest, was one, the focus has been on how to develop new managerial talent from within. Forrest launched Forrest Futures in 2012. The scheme is an in-house management development pathway aimed at addressing the need for us to better develop senior talent from the grass roots of the business. The business left the scheme open to all directly employed Forrest staff, placing adverts on every site and letters alongside payslips.

Of its 200 blue collar employees, there were around 25 applications in the first year. Of these, Forrest took just three forward; it was important that it selected those it felt had the best chance of success, and balanced this against the availability of future roles. Forrest provided extensive managerial training, including some of the on-going professional development courses it offers to existing managers, before they make the transition. In effect, candidates underwent all of the training a typical managerial role, such as a Site Manager, might perform, spanning First Aid, health and safety management, scaffold management. All of the students were given an opportunity to apply for a degree or Higher National Certificate, fully funded by Forrest. With the cost of higher education doubling in the past 12 months alone, this has been a massive help for people that might have otherwise been cut off from these qualifications. Typically, many of the students were school leavers with no A-Levels, so a degree may not have been something they’d have considered without sponsorship.

Forrest’s on-going managerial training includes its own scheme, New Leaf, which was recently accredited by the Chartered Management Institute. The organisation recognised it as the best internally developed course they’d ever endorsed. A buddy program paired each of them with a manager operating in the field in which they were hoping to ply their trade. There were also opportunities for them to provide holiday or temporary absence cover as brief secondments into their potential new roles. The promise for those participating in the scheme was that when they graduated they’d have an opportunity to then secure a new role within the business at managerial level. Forrest ring fences all appropriate vacancies to give the students the opportunity to apply before anyone else.

At the heart of Forrest Futures is a desire to help provide aspirational people within the business with a route to progress in a way that is not typically available within the industry. It means that as a business, Forrest can now offer employees a route through the company right from when they step out of the school gates and into the company, thru to senior level managerial positions within the firm. James Flitcroft is one example of how the scheme has helped to nurture talent in this way. He began life at Forrest as a trainee joiner after studying his apprenticeship at a local college. After joining Forrest Futures he was able to apply for an assistant site manager role, which he then went on to secure. What James' example also demonstrates, and something which is common to other Forrest Future candidates, is that it can help to promote and develop employees that are in-tune with Forrest’s own organisational culture. As the business has grown over the past decade, athe role its culture plays is critical in helping sustain the commitments to quality and customer service excellence that we make to its clients. This intangible quality to Forrest Future graduates, some of whom have been with our business for five or more years, is major asset to this growth strategy. In 2013, we were able to offer a further ten places on the scheme. Already, three are on secondments covering for assistant site managers, our first tier of management. We now have a vacancy in the business which all three have interviewed for, leaving me with the unenviable task of picking the right candidate. Fortunately, it’s one of the hardest decisions I’ll have to make.

Paul Rigby Learning and Development Manager
Forrest
forrest.co.uk