High praise for Ringway’s Lincolnshire Trainee Highway Worker Apprenticeship Scheme

At a ceremony at Clarence House, HRH the Prince of Wales congratulated Ringway Lincolnshire on being highly recommended for its Trainee Highway Worker Apprenticeship Scheme in the Serco Talent Award, in association with the Talent & Enterprise Taskforce, at the annual Business in the Community (BITC) Awards for Excellence.

The awards are the UK’s most significant, independent corporate responsibility awards that recognise and celebrate companies who have shown commitment to innovation and creating sustainable corporate responsibility projects.

The scheme was developed to target those young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) register between the ages of 16 and 24 by providing a practical, well resourced and well supported training opportunity.

Steve Blackburn, Ringway Divisional Director Lincolnshire said: “We identified a need to replace an ageing workforce and an industry challenge in terms of the recruitment pool that was coming through, the majority of potential applicants where unskilled, lacking in construction experience and not always attracted to an unfashionable industry so the scheme was created.

We are committed to promoting employment among the disadvantaged and disengaged and by investing in talent and training, new recruits will have the necessary skills for our business.  So far, we have employed 33 young people from the NEET register.”

“An additional bonus, is that staff retention has increased, those employees involved have been re-energised by helping in the development and training of the apprentices. “

Award judge’s comment: “We all agree that it is an innovative, creative and intelligent way in which to respond to a real business and social issue. For this reason we where pleased to award Ringway highly commended status for 2009.

“The key reasons where the programme offers a clear career path and an opportunity to harness local talent, local passion and have a local impact. The trainee worker programme is a hugely innovative response to address a real business issue and with the national role out has the promise to change the cultural temperature of the organisation. This is a fantastic example of how to inspire challenging young people to have real aspirations.”