GQA Qualifications Blog

Wednesday 22 June 2016

If a job’s worth doing….


Leading industry installation company Job Worth Doing certainly believes in doing things the right way.  The company which engages over 120 teams of surveyors and installers on an annual basis to fulfil its requirements has commenced a programme of training and qualification to enable it to ‘grow its own’ in the future.
Kevin Bowles General Operations Manager takes up the story “Our requirement for installers keeps growing and earlier in the year when we had a particular shortfall I contacted Chase Taylor Installer Resourcing”.
“We recognised that we needed to find a solution which would fill the increasing skills gap we were seeing in the industry.  We had tried various initiatives in the past – holding open days on a regional basis, in the evenings and at weekends and had simply not had any response”.
“Director Paul Lindsay was able to help us out with our needs, but more importantly alongside that introduced us to their partner GQA Qualifications who have been writing qualifications for and with the window industry for over 25 years”.
“Why is this so important?  Simply this, I had been thinking about a young person’s training model for some time and working with Paul and GQA helped me to come to a landing on it and made me determined to make it happen”.
“I wanted to find a way of helping and encouraging young people to enter the window and door industry, but to have a chance to achieve more than being trainee surveyors and installers; I wanted them to have a genuine and transparent career path which they could see and follow”.
“Qualifications is a key part of the process and working with GQA ticked a massive box for me.  The second issue was the provision of practical training facilities and I was delighted that the company had the same vision as myself”.
 “Working with Chase Taylor Installer Resourcing is great in terms of delivering surveyors and installers to us in the here and now; but our needs are always going to be greater than what we can get from the existing labour pool, and ‘growing our own’ is the surest way of securing our ability to meet the needs of our company business plan on a long term sustainable basis”.
“As someone who had undertaken a true apprenticeship when I was younger I understood the need to provide proper knowledge and education if we were going to bring people into the industry and keep them here”.
“So our plan was developed to build proper hands on practical and relevant training pods.  We built the first one at our Crawley depot and already have plans to build a further eleven”.
“It is a massive commitment on our part, the sheer cost of building the facilities in our depots alone is significant, but add to that the cost of the 44 apprenticeships we have created to get the ball rolling – and these are fully employed young people on a real wage to encourage them to feel that they are genuinely a part of our team”.
“In my opinion it is the only way to get young people into the sector – give them a proper training programme, pay them the rate for the job, and show them a true career path to which they can aspire”.
“My job has been really helped by our partnership with Chase Taylor Installer Resourcing and GQA.  They have helped us significantly and we are delighted to have the programme up and running as something which can support us, but also support the idea that bringing young people into the industry is achievable and can deliver tangible business results”.
For more information on Chase Taylor Installer Resourcing www.chasetaylorinstallers.co.uk