A sound investment
Ilkeston, Derbyshire, [9 September 05] People are the most important investment in many businesses, yet they’re frequently overlooked as management try to slash costs and improve margins. But that’s not the case in Ilkeston, where new home developer Fairgrove Homes recognises the importance of investing in its staff and is looking forward to being assessed for the Investors in People (IIP) Award later this year.
“We operate in a very competitive market,” says Steve Midgley, managing director of Fairgrove Homes. “Our customers expect quality and we believe the best way of giving them this quality is to ensure everyone in the company receives the best training available.”
Fairgrove began working towards the IIP Award in March 2004. All employees have had the option to improve their skills in areas such as IT, health and safety and specific job-related training. “IT training is essential because many construction industry workers never get the chance to develop computing skills – and as our lives our becoming increasingly computerised, it makes sense that we ensure everyone is capable of operating in the digital age,” says Steve. “Meanwhile, health and safety training and job-related training ensure that all staff use industry-recognised best practice in their day-to-day work,” he adds.
Staff at Fairgrove have had the chance to work towards the ITQ qualification – an IT user qualification and training package, which is the new NVQ for IT users. “The advantage of training to a qualification-level is that we all have a benchmark from which to develop in the future,” says Steve.
One of Fairgrove’s Investors in People successes is Mervyn Bollard, site manager at the company’s Spondon and Sutton Bonington sites. “Any training you can do is good – and IIP has given me a greater insight into how to do many things. I’m going through IT training at the moment and am learning new ways of working with spreadsheets. Also, although I have a lot of experience of site management, there is always something to learn from a health and safety point of view, so this training has been useful. I’m also involved in passing this health and safety knowledge on to site teams through a series of ‘Toolbox talks’.”
Fairgrove is now gearing up for the final stage of its IIP Award. “We’re going through a series of in-house appraisals with IIP assessors and we hope to be IIP accredited during the autumn,” says Steve.
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