Barnsley-based bakery wins Diversity in Recruitment Award – Recognising excellence in recruiting from diverse groups
Background
Fosters is a family-owned bakery, founded in 1952, with a history of steady growth currently employing 240 employees and producing frozen and ambient bread, confectionery and gluten free products for food service operators, supermarkets and high street retailers. The company exports to Greece and Spain and even supplies bread to the French! One million products leave the gates of Fosters Bakery weekly.
Recruitment
As business has grown over the last few years, Fosters has developed a policy of recruiting a diverse workforce which includes providing opportunities to bring ex-offenders back into the workplace and actively seeking new labour sources. The company currently employs 50 migrant workers mainly from Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Turkey and also from Thailand, Malta and the Philippines. The company recruits via a recruitment agency, through word of mouth of exisitng employees and from the local labour force.
Support for immigrant employees
Inclusion and integration are top priority for the management of the bakery and the company matches its management support appropriately to the individual needs of the diverse workforce.
The migrant labour workforce is well supported. Initial assistance is provided with settling in, visits to Jobcentre Plus to obtain National Insurance numbers and help completing statutory forms. Fosters tries where possible to accommodate holiday requirements, including for religious festivals, and even helped some book last minute airline tickets to return home to attend to an unavoidable crisis or family problem. Out of hours meetings have been held in instances of urgent need and when a Polish staff member had an accident, key staff from the bakery were on hand to visit him in hospital and to arrange a programme of hospital visits by other staff members knowing that the employee did not have a family network in the country to support him.
The native workforce have helped by providing unwanted clothing and household goods for newcomers and a noticeboard is available to advertise such offers.
The immigrant employees have the same induction and training, hours of work, rates of pay and rota duties as all members of staff. Company policy insists on use of English but additional support has been developed for the Polish workforce via a sub-titled DVD on Food Hygiene, Manual Handling and Health & Safety. Mutual staff support is common in the family atmosphere of the bakery, including support with using the newly implemented on-line holiday booking system.
After the initial 26 week recruitment agency contract term has expired, Fosters HR department provides the necessary support to amend the employee’s work permit for their retention and progression.
Fosters collects data on the professional background of its migrant employees at recruitment and benefits therefore from talent spotting. Teachers, army engineers and professionals and factory managers form part of the mix.
Career progression
Fosters are a signatory to the national Skills Pledge. Building a career pathway is part of the company ethic and all staff are encouraged to achieve a minimum Level 2 NVQ in Food Manufacturing. On successful completion of the qualification, employees benefit from an automatic pay rise and staff upgrade.
All migrant workers are provided with English language training (ESOL) paid for by Fosters as well as paying the employee 2 hours’ pay whilst they attend the class. There are varying levels of ability of the English Language and the more proficient support the others by acting as ‘language facilitators’ when necessary.
Employee benefits
A number of migrant employees have progressed to supervisor and management positions and their experience of the English Language has enabled them to participate in the NVQ programme at Fosters to help enhance their career. Promotion opportunities encourage loyalty and have a positive effect on retention. Additionally, staff rotate on jobs to avoid too much heavy work.
The structure of support and employee benefits has been agreed with the Bakery Food & Allied Workers Union.
Company benefits
Diversity in recruitment is a part of the HR strategy and the overall aim is for Fosters to stand out as an excellent and leading edge employer in the industry. An integral part of delivering to this vision is to develop a skilled, committed and adaptable workforce that is able to contribute to a changing work and business environment and the initiatives implemented so far have helped contribute to this.
As a result of the the supportive HR systems which have been implemented over the past few years, staff loss has reduced significantly from 21.8% in March 2006 to 6.2% in March 2009.
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