Crown Highways has showcased its commitment to developing its people by joining The 5% Club, an industry-led initiative focussed on driving momentum into the recruitment of apprentices, graduates and sponsored students.
The 5% Club, initiated by Leo Quinn CEO of Balfour Beatty in 2013, is a movement of more than 300 employers providing ‘earn and learn’ opportunities to develop the skills and talents people need to become more employable and create meaningful careers. Companies joining The 5% Club commit to raising the number of apprentices, sponsored students and graduates on formal programmes to 5% of their total workforce within five years.
Members are also asked to publicly report their progress in their Annual Report. Existing members range from SMEs to FTSEs and cover a number of diverse industries, from engineering through to the legal sector.
Crown Highways are now a member of The 5% Club by virtue of employing 6 apprentices within their business.
The 6 apprentices are:
- Dillion Devers – Electrical Installation Apprenticeship – day release Preston College
- Coy Wilkes – Electrical Installation Apprenticeship – day release Preston College
- Gary Blackburn – Electrical Installation Apprenticeship – day release Preston College
- Daniel Halpin – Electrical Installation Apprenticeship – day release Preston College
- Callum Lovell – Electrical Installation Apprenticeship – day release Preston College
- Emily Webster – Apprentice Quantity Surveyor – one day per week at University of Salford
Mike Dale, Crown Highways MD spoke to us about the company initiative to join The 5% Club:
“It’s well known, spoken about and documented that there is a skills gap in the highways industry. The only way to bridge that is to bring in younger people and apprentices, train and upskill them to the highest standards and create more skilled workers for the future good of the sector.
“This is ultimately our motivation for joining the 5% club, to create more skilled workers for Crown Highways, and the highways sector as a whole.
“This is something that we’ve been working towards for some time now, being a member of The 5% club has been a real company objective so we’re very proud to be here now.”
Lady Cobham, Director General of The 5% Club said, “We’re delighted to welcome Crown Highways into membership. The 5% Club provides a fantastic network of HR professionals, sharing and learning from each other. All our members share an ethos of creating a skilled workforce through ‘earn and learn’ development programmes, helping people develop meaningful career paths.”
