Stadco employees and supply chain benefit from £100,000 training grant

Stadco, the leading international supplier of body-in-white products and services to the automotive industry, is carrying out additional training initiatives throughout its UK operations thanks to a £100,000 funding boost from the Telford Manufacturing Partnership.

The first strand is a behavioural safety training programme which every employee in the business will undertake. This innovative training moves on from just having good procedures and controls, to promoting a mind-set in staff of the consequences of their actions. Stadco has reduced accident rates by 30 per cent year-on-year since 2011, and in turn reduced days lost as a result of injury by 90 per cent. Despite this strong performance, Stadco is aiming for a zero-harm business, so invests in an ongoing continuous improvement programme for health and safety.

The second strand is the 2014 Leadership Effectiveness Programme, designed to train leaders in behavioural and technical competence. To develop this programme Stadco enlisted the help of the EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation which is made up of industry expert practitioners. This has resulted in a better understanding of the skills that Stadco employees need to grow and develop both within the company and wider sector.

The Leadership Effectiveness Programme aims to give practising or potential managers the foundation for formal development in their role. It supports managers to develop core skills including problem solving and decision making, understanding leadership and how to motivate others to perform in the workplace. Seventy of Stadco’s managers have already gone through the training, with another 20 to go.

The Telford Manufacturing Partnership, a consortium of 10 engineering and manufacturing companies based in the Borough, secured £1M in funding from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, through the Employer Ownership of Skills pilot scheme. The funding was awarded to enable the consortium, which includes Stadco, to up-skill existing employees and train new employees and apprentices, in order to maintain a competitive edge in the market place.

Heath Cade, Stadco’s HR director said: “Stadco is fast becoming a true learning organisation. There is a national focus on up-skilling manufacturing staff in the UK supply chain, and this is an objective which is a primary aim for our business, too.

“While both training initiatives were in our business plan already, the funding from the Telford Manufacturing Partnership has allowed us to escalate and roll out these programmes much quicker, as well as freeing up resources to carry out other essential training such as Six Sigma.”

Stuart Boreham, Project Manager at the Telford Manufacturing Partnership, said: “It is heartening to see the impact the Telford Manufacturing Partnership is having within the Borough. Significant training delivery has taken place across the consortium, involving many hundreds of employees, and the benefits of the Employer Ownership Scheme are being reaped. For example, companies such as Stadco – one of the area’s largest employers – have been better able to ensure employees have the skills needed to ensure their organisation’s competitiveness. From the outset, Stadco demonstrated how important up-skilling was to its growth strategy and has gone on to utilise the allocated funding to great effect.”

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