PW
Well-known member
Well, we can certainly see things are picking up in a big way, we are very busy and of course the inevitable happens, you start losing men.
We have to date lost 4 lads who have gone of chasing £££’s opening up all the old problems, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem whatsoever with Scaffolders jumping ship, that’s just Market Forces, however, the paying for training scenario rears its head again.
One of our departing lads just upped and left, working no notice period because he knew full well that we would have deducted money from his final salary for the training we had provided on his behalf. Now, the Mercenary Scaffolder out there will probably be thinking Good Boy….However, this situation is seriously counter- productive, as we are now having a serious re-think on our training strategy.
This has happened a number of times in my Management Career, when I was with the likes of SGB, it was not such an issue as they have a massive Training Budget, but with us just being a small business it is a serious amount of time and money purely wasted.
The onus nowadays seems to be based on a Trust Relationship with the lad you are sending on the courses, yes, we sign them up to training agreements, but, as explained above they can just not show on the Monday and all you can really do is claw back the week they have just worked and any outstanding holiday, which never covers what the business has outlaid in Wages, Training Costs, Admin costs sorting out portfolios etc., Skills Tests, Touch Screen Tests and even applying to the CISRS for the cards which can run into many 1000’s of pounds, yes, there are grants that you can claim back from CITB, but, believe me they nowhere near cover the costs.
The counter - productive element is that the situation we now face, which I’m sure a lot of other Scaffolding Businesses are looking at is:
1) Do we bother investing in Training at all?
2) Do we just recruit Qualified Scaffolders and not bother bringing new blood into the Industry?
3) Do we switch the onus onto the lads in regards to paying for their own training?
4) Do we introduce a “Bond Scheme” whereby the training candidate has to put up a sum of Money that is held and released when they have completed a certain length of service following the training?
All the above are not really desirable but we are getting to the stage were something really needs to be done, we are seriously considering going down the “Bond Scheme” route.
The above are open questions to the Scaffolding Industry; I would be interested to see what you all think?
Cheers
Paul
We have to date lost 4 lads who have gone of chasing £££’s opening up all the old problems, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem whatsoever with Scaffolders jumping ship, that’s just Market Forces, however, the paying for training scenario rears its head again.
One of our departing lads just upped and left, working no notice period because he knew full well that we would have deducted money from his final salary for the training we had provided on his behalf. Now, the Mercenary Scaffolder out there will probably be thinking Good Boy….However, this situation is seriously counter- productive, as we are now having a serious re-think on our training strategy.
This has happened a number of times in my Management Career, when I was with the likes of SGB, it was not such an issue as they have a massive Training Budget, but with us just being a small business it is a serious amount of time and money purely wasted.
The onus nowadays seems to be based on a Trust Relationship with the lad you are sending on the courses, yes, we sign them up to training agreements, but, as explained above they can just not show on the Monday and all you can really do is claw back the week they have just worked and any outstanding holiday, which never covers what the business has outlaid in Wages, Training Costs, Admin costs sorting out portfolios etc., Skills Tests, Touch Screen Tests and even applying to the CISRS for the cards which can run into many 1000’s of pounds, yes, there are grants that you can claim back from CITB, but, believe me they nowhere near cover the costs.
The counter - productive element is that the situation we now face, which I’m sure a lot of other Scaffolding Businesses are looking at is:
1) Do we bother investing in Training at all?
2) Do we just recruit Qualified Scaffolders and not bother bringing new blood into the Industry?
3) Do we switch the onus onto the lads in regards to paying for their own training?
4) Do we introduce a “Bond Scheme” whereby the training candidate has to put up a sum of Money that is held and released when they have completed a certain length of service following the training?
All the above are not really desirable but we are getting to the stage were something really needs to be done, we are seriously considering going down the “Bond Scheme” route.
The above are open questions to the Scaffolding Industry; I would be interested to see what you all think?
Cheers
Paul