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ONBOARDING
Thomson describes the British Sugar journey as one of “evolution not revolution as it didn’t just happen overnight”. But as the contract has evolved, so too has EMCOR’s challenge in employing the right people to fill vacancies in what Thomson describes as a ‘destination site’ in the heart of the Norfolk countryside. Prior to the contract, a persistent problem at the facility was the low recruitment and retention rate for FM employees.
“You must want to come to work here,” says Thomson, “so attracting recruits can be a struggle, because we’re competing with agriculture, of which there are a lot of jobs, for instance all the sugar beet processed at the site is grown within a 28 mile radius.
“This means we have to work really hard, using recruitment companies, posting on job boards and through local agents and friends and family. One of the spaces we’re moving into are with charities, for instance a local council initiative Norfolk Boost and the Department of Working Practice. We’re also working with the Shaw Trust which helps ex-offenders trying to get rehabilitated into the workplace.
“We’re looking at all these opportunities to find our next talent bank because we’re in a really condensed market place.”
Being miles from any café or coffee shop, on site catering is extremely important to the site, with Baxter Storey currently sub-contracted to give “everyone the opportunity to have a really good meal”. All staff are paid the Real Living Wage and the cleaning staff who account for the majority of the contract are on four different cleaning ranges; from level one of cleaning office amenities to level four where staff use industrial mechanical cleaning equipment, are confine space entry and egress trained, and are responsible for cleaning tower scaffolds and using the jet clean.
TRAINING AND WELLBEING
Given the inherent risks of working in manufacturing, new recruits go through rigorous onboarding site induction and training as well as a buddying programme. This is supplemented with a series of 12 mandated EMCOR UK training programmes – including asbestos management, COSHH training, high manual lifting, working in confined spaces and HAZMAT awareness. The FM team has even created its own bespoke accredited City and Guilds level 1 cleaning in a factory environment, course.
Supervision on such a complex site is also vital, so a set of seven different leadership courses have been developed in collaboration with EMCOR UK Learning & Development team that reward those who aspire to moving into supervisor roles. The team also delivers cross-functional training of all of the teams, which in case of labour shortages occurring means it can still deploy staff in key roles as required.
Another key preoccupation for Thomson is in monitoring the wellbeing of those deployed at the plants. In 2022, mental ill health was the second highest cause of absenteeism for EMCOR UK colleagues working at British Sugar, not terribly surprising given that males account for over 80 per cent of staff of which more than half are over 50 years old.
Says Thomson: “When I joined psychological safety was something you didn’t talk about and I simply couldn’t collude with that continuing so decided we’ve got to do something different. First, we launched an initiative, ‘This is us’ where I shared some really highly personal stuff with colleagues on ‘these are the 10 things that impact me’. This helped to set the precedent and it started to build a bit of momentum.
“We then looked at how many mental health First Aiders we had, and there weren’t any, now we’ve got 53, which means you’ve got 53 people trained in mental health signposting, of which eight are trained in more advanced analysis through a two-day mental health programme.
“Through our partnership with charity Access Community Trust (ACT) EMCOR UK staff volunteer at the Steam House Café in King’s Lynn, one of the charity’s mental health crisis cafes and we provide on-going drop in sessions at sites for all colleagues and customers.”
These initiatives have resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in the number of working days lost by EMCOR UK colleagues working at British Sugar due to mental health issues.
Given the physical demands of the job, health and safety remains a huge priority but so too do physical health checks. Just the day before our visit onsite wellbeing checks with AXA healthcare on blood pressure and heart health culminated in two members of staff being referred to their doctors.
