One Stop for a career
7 September 2023
The blog recently discussed the difficulties of recruiting staff and promoting hire as a great career opportunity. A company that is addressing this head-on is One Stop Hire which has just established an Early Careers Academy to train apprentices for roles throughout its business. I was able to attend the official opening this week.
Seven young people comprise the first intake and a similar number will be recruited each year. They will train for a two-year Level 2 Diploma in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering (Development Competence), together with welding and engine maintenance, followed by a six-month period of assessment.
The programme has been developed from an established construction industry course and tailored to meet specific hire industry needs.
It is the product of much hard work by One Stop Hire CEO Steve Hitchen, MD Kieron Power, Head of HR Kate Sinacola and HR Adviser Jelena Patel, supported by David Birchall from Wigan & Leigh College and Chris Selby from the Cross-Industry Construction Apprenticeship Task Force (CCATF) which promotes employer engagement in apprenticeship training.
The apprentices will attend Wigan & Leigh College one day per week, spending the other four days in the Early Careers Academy which has been built at One Stop Hire's Wigan depot. Here they will put theory into practice, tutored by One Stop Hire’s Mike Artingstall who has been an engineer with the company since 2013.
As previously mentioned on the blog, Steve Hitchen has for many years been particularly pro-active in reaching out to schools and colleges to promote hire as a career. Indeed, several members of the current team have joined the business via this route. The Academy now puts the initiative on a more formal basis.
“The great thing is that our apprentices will be going to the college and then training in a real hire environment, getting to know the fitters, drivers, hire desk staff and others in the business, understanding how the industry works,” Steve told me.
Addressing the new intake directly at the opening, Steve emphasised the career opportunities available in hire compared, perhaps, against some other industry sectors.
“Some people want to go to university and become a banker, which is fine, but they’ll probably never get to set up their own bank. In hire you can progress from being a fitter or a driver into, say, operations or the hire desk and rise up through the business. You might one day start your own company with one depot, then two, then eight. The barriers to entry are low. If you put in the work, you’ll do well.”
The ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Academy opening was performed by Martin Ainscough, founder of the Ainscough Crane Hire business (which he sold in 2007) and who, incidentally, is Steve’s father-in-law. He established a training scheme at his business to train crane operators.
“Some people think plant is dirty, greasy and a dead end,” he said. “But if you’ve got passion and are backed by a business with the right culture, you can go a long way. What One Stop Hire is offering here is not a job, but a career.”
One Stop Hire currently has apprentices in other parts of the business, too, including hire desk management and finance. And Kate Sinacola told me there are even plans to offer training in general areas like IT and driving lessons for those under 17, again to give the young people the skills they will need in the future.
Chris Selby, Head of Marketing, Communications & External Affairs at the CCATF, said that the organisation has helped co-ordinate discussions between various bodies to develop the new training programme. “The industry needs organisations to reach out with schemes like this because they simply won’t come to you.
“And with an ageing workforce, construction generally needs to recruit 250,000 new people into the industry by 2027 just to stand still,” he added.
One Stop Hire might open similar academies in the Midlands and the north east of England in the future.
Pictured at the opening in Wigan are, from left, David Birchall, Martin Ainscough, Chris Selby and Steve Hitchen. (Photo: Alan Guthrie)
● Don't forget to explore the Site-Eco area of the blog for news of sustainable products and developments relevant to the world of hire.
