COMMITTEE FOR EMPLOYMENT AND LEARNING

Report on the Inquiry into Education and Training for Industry (Continued)

2576.

Mr J Kelly: At the end of that?

2577.

Miss Corey: Yes. It would be better for the young person to go into maintenance or tool making, where there are only two or three apprenticeships per year.

2578.

Mr J Kelly: Do you think of welding as semi-skilled?

2579.

Mrs Turbitt: No. Due to the nature of our business, we require a high level of skill in that area. All our employees are termed operatives; however, we have to differentiate between various skills requirements.

2580.

Mr J Kelly: When you say "operative", what do you differentiate between?

2581.

Mrs Turbitt: If we were advertising for welders, we would not ask for semi-skilled operatives; we would ask for welders.

2582.

Mr J Kelly: Do you ask for welders or operatives?

2583.

Mrs Turbitt: We would advertise for welders. Other vacancies may be advertised as "operatives", stating the department and skills required.

2584.

Mr J Kelly: Do you have a difficulty with that?

2585.

Mrs Turbitt: A welder requires certain skills whereas an assembly operative would not have to be trained to the same standard on joining the company. We provide the assembly operative's training. However, this is not usually the situation with a welder; we require them to have prior welding skills and experience.

2586.

Mr J Kelly: Are your welders up to x-ray standard?

2587.

Mrs Turbitt: Yes.

2588.

Mr J Kelly: Do you have any difficulty with image problems in recruitment - in terms of religion, for example?

2589.

Mrs Turbitt: No. We have a very balanced workforce.

2590.

The Chairperson: Many questions seem to indicate that Committee members are trying to form a picture of NACCO's skills profile. What percentage of your workforce in Craigavon are graduates and what percentage are apprentice trained or the equivalent?

2591.

Mrs Turbitt: I do not have a breakdown of the figures with me, but I could submit it to the Committee later.

2592.

The Chairperson: That might be useful.

2593.

Mr Byrne: Miss Corey talked about the difficulties of matching the requirements of the certification bodies with your company's training. Is GNVQ Level 3 too theoretical, or is it not directly related to the work that you want people to do?

2594.

Miss Corey: It is not directly related to the work that we want people to do. It is good for maintenance and tool making areas, which is why we have no problem in recruiting apprentices to those areas. However, in traditional semi-skilled areas they have difficulty meeting the standard requirements. They would have to be flexed into maintenance and tool making, which is inconsistent with production.

2595.

Mr J Kelly: Are there any union difficulties in the company?

2596.

Mrs Turbitt: No. We have fairly good employee relations within the company.

2597.

Mr J Kelly: Do you have a union?

2598.

Mrs Turbitt: Yes, we do.

2599.

Mr Carrick: You currently have 800 employees and have difficulties in obtaining skilled labour. Is this hampering the company's expansion? Is it inhibiting or delaying that expansion? If the right supply of skilled labour were available, would you recruit more people?

2600.

Mrs Turbitt: We have had some difficulty in recruiting people with the necessary skills and experience. However, any difficulties experienced have not had a significant impact in relation to company expansion, to my knowledge.

2601.

Mrs Nelis: Do you go into schools and institutes to recruit employees? Do you work with the careers guidance people, and do you find them helpful?

2602.

Mrs Turbitt: We work closely with a number of schools. We go to careers fairs and exhibitions and we participate in various education/industry initiatives such as interview skills training. School visits are beneficial because they give students some background knowledge on what the company does and the working environment. However, some apprentices may still get a shock when they first come into an engineering firm because they have not had enough background knowledge about the industry and environment. More preparation by careers advisers may be helpful.

2603.

Mr J Kelly: I am struck by the fact that you are both female. What is the gender ratio in the company?

2604.

Mrs Turbitt: It is predominantly male.

2605.

Mr J Kelly: Do you have a fair percentage of females working there?

2606.

Miss Corey: The figure is about 6%.

2607.

Mrs Turbitt: That is probably correct, although I do not have the exact figure with me today.

2608.

Mr J Kelly: Do you have female apprentices?

2609.

Mrs Turbitt: We do not have female apprentices at present. However, we have a number of female engineers.

2610.

Mr J Kelly: Is that at the design level?

2611.

Mrs Turbitt: No. The female engineers whom we currently employ are based in manufacturing and quality.

2612.

Mr Beggs: You said that you were proactive about going to schools and educating teachers and pupils in the world of industry. Do you, for instance, organise school visits so that students can see what an industrial environment is like? Do you think the education sector and society value the worth and importance of the engineering sector, or is it perceived as not being as worthwhile as the professions? I trained as an engineer, and I think that people would be more impressed if I had studied medicine or dentistry. Does society's perception of engineering need to change so that people will value the manufacturing sector?

2613.

Mrs Turbitt: "Engineering" is a very broad-based term. Many people perceive themselves to be engineers in various occupations and industries. We organise school visits and work experience. However, our factory involves some heavy engineering and some students may be discouraged initially because of their perception of the environment. An hour-long tour would not really be sufficient to give them an idea of the company's business.

2614.

Miss Corey: The education sector is beginning to give credence to the importance of industry. In the past couple of years we have worked with the University of Ulster Northern Ireland Science and Technology Regional Organisation (NISTRO) project. We bring in lower- sixth-form students to work on engineering projects. These are not necessarily students who have decided that they want to go into engineering, but they do want an insight. Perhaps they are studying maths, chemistry or biology at A level but have not yet decided what they want to do. It gives them an opportunity for experience.

2615.

Mrs Nelis: The name, the North American Coal Corporation, intrigues me. How did that originate?

2616.

Mrs Turbitt: The company is American owned and it has three business arms, one of which is lignite mining, primarily as fuel for power generation by electric utilities.

2617.

Mr Byrne: Is the research and design team for forklift trucks based here, or are new products designed elsewhere?

2618.

Mrs Turbitt: There is a product design team, with five engineers, on site. The group's main research and development facility is based in Portland, Oregon, which is the group's headquarters.

2619.

Mr Byrne: Is the Craigavon design team important to the group?

2620.

Mrs Turbitt: Yes, they are important; they are responsible for design maintenance and value improve­ment activity.

2621.

The Chairperson: Mr Byrne made a good point about the extent of design undertaken here. Supplementary to that, how many higher degrees - PhDs or whatever - are there in engineering?

2622.

Miss Corey: No one has a PhD in our Craigavon plant, but there are two chartered engineers.

2623.

Mr Carrick: I am a local person and interested in the interaction between the company and the education system. I am sure that NACCO has had some experiences during the 20-odd years that it has operated here. What improvements would you like to see in linkages with other organisations?

2624.

Miss Corey: NACCO has been working closely with the Upper Bann Institute, which has been flexible in providing courses for the organisation's training needs. The courses are flexible and meet shift patterns. However, I think that NACCO needs to work more closely with the Upper Bann Institute with regard to the quality of courses provided because the institute may not use the same type of machines - CNC machining, for example - or machine language that NACCO uses. Linkages would be improved if we worked more closely in the design of the training programmes. The improvements may not necessarily lead to qualifications but they would provide better training for the organisation.

2625.

Mr Carrick: What mechanism has NACCO identified to make that happen?

2626.

Miss Corey: NACCO is working closely with Training Direct and our plant manager, Alan Little, chaired the first meeting.

2627.

Mr Carrick: Is the Upper Bann Institute being responsive to your requests for the harmonisation of machine languages?

2628.

Miss Corey: Yes, to an extent, but the institute is having difficulties with costings and the number of students that NACCO can provide. NACCO wanted to run a CNC machining course with the institute, but could only provide six people for that course. The institute's quota was a minimum of 12 people, so if NACCO could only provide six people, there would be an increased charge. The Upper Bann Institute needs to open out to other manufacturing organisations, which is what Training Direct is aiming to do.

2629.

Mr Beggs: Your company is investing a significant amount of money in organising in-house training for students and out-house training from external tutors. Do you think that Northern Ireland companies are investing enough money in training? Are people you have trained to a higher level being poached? How can we encourage more people to invest in training?

2630.

Miss Corey: It is difficult to evaluate the return on investment in training, and that is particularly true for smaller companies. A company could invest £2,000 to £3,000 per year on someone who goes to another company that pays better. The company's philosophy is to train. If you train people, they might leave, but if you do not train them, they might stay and you are left with an organisation of untrained people.

2631.

Companies that offer better salaries have poached individuals from NACCO. However, the return on investment in training is substantial. An employee might leave eventually, but they are very useful when they are still with us.

2632.

Mr Beggs: Are other companies investing enough money? Do industries in Northern Ireland want people trained on the cheap, without having to invest?

2633.

Miss Corey: My own perception, but not necessarily the perception of the organisation, is that other companies do not invest enough in training. NACCO is a forward-thinking company when it comes to training.

2634.

The Chairperson: The company has various subsidiaries. Is the skills profile in Craigavon lower than in the Netherlands or in the United States, for example? Could this be explained by the fact that there are substantial wage differences between countries, as there are across the manufacturing sector as a whole? Do labour productivity levels differ between the company's subsidiaries? Those questions may be difficult to answer unless you have a bird's-eye view of the whole company.

2635.

Miss Corey: I can partly answer the questions by using the Nijmegen plant as an example. It has had huge difficulties in recruiting welders because the Netherlands does not have many welders. We hope to be able to address issues such as this as we move towards being a European-focused organisation.

2636.

Mr Byrne: What type of organisational structure is there in the company? Does it operate the just-in-time system or a team-working system? How is the production system managed?

2637.

Mrs Turbitt: The company uses a process called "demand flow technology", which is a mathematically based way of designing the manufacturing process and incorporates the use of a kanban system.

2638.

Employees work within self-managed teams, which the company continually develops. The company does not have a supervisory level; there are superintendents who report to the local leadership team, which comprises seven managers. The company structure is, therefore, fairly flat.

2639.

The Chairperson: I would like to thank you on behalf of the Committee. The presentation was extremely interesting. You answered questions on a wide and detailed area of the operations of your plant in Craigavon and on the company generally. It was a helpful insight into the training position of your type of engineering and inward investment in an American-owned company. The Committee will reflect on what you said and we wish you well with your work.

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

Thursday 3 May 2001

Members present:

Dr Birnie (Chairperson)

Mr Carrick (Deputy Chairperson)

Mr Beggs

Mr Byrne

Mrs Carson

Mr Dallat

Mr R Hutchinson

Mrs Nelis

Witnesses:

Mr J Cromie  ) Moy Park

Mr A Gibson )

2640.

Mrs Carson: I wish to put on record a non-­financial interest. A member of my family is employed by Moy Park.

2641.

The Chairperson: On behalf of the Committee I welcome Mr John Cromie, human resources manager, and Mr Alan Gibson, purchasing director, both from Moy Park. Thank you for coming and for the written submission that the company has given to the inquiry. We are pleased to be able to meet you in the locality where your major plant is based. If you would make a short introductory statement we can then move to questions and answers.

2642.

Mr Gibson: Peter Wolf, our commercial director, sends his apologies. He is in Brazil this week - obviously, as part of an international company, these things can happen at short notice. He has asked me to step in, so I will do my best to facilitate and answer any questions.

2643.

We want to take this opportunity to give evidence on three main areas. One is the importance of the food industry - and as Chairman of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association I have a particular interest in ensuring that the food industry is not seen as a sunset industry, but as a dynamic, innovative, growth industry. It is true to say that there has been a certain amount of consolidation in the agri-processing sector due to market forces. However, within food processing, and the work that has been done, it is certainly not a sunset industry. The agri-processing sector employs 70,000 people, directly and indirectly, and has over 300 food companies with a combined turnover of £2·5 billion, and 23% of all manufacturing products sold in Northern Ireland is from food. Nine per cent of all exports from Northern Ireland is food, and 18% of all employees in manufacturing are in the food industry. Therefore, it is strategically and economically fundamental to the Northern Ireland economy.

2644.

Regarding our position as a global player, we are part of an American owned company called OSI. We are run very much as a local company, with local management. Decision-making is done locally, but we have the opportunity to benchmark and get experience of international business.

2645.

We firmly believe there is a need for increased funding to help local education providers to meet the needs of the industry, because there is a vacuum and shortfall. We have done some work with the Upper Bann Institute and others such as East Tyrone Institute and Loughry College. We want those types of colleges and education providers to have sufficient funding to meet the needs of the industry. If you look at the food industry as a whole and our educational system, it is fair to say that the top 20% of our students in Northern Ireland are as good as anywhere in Europe. We have no issues with the high level of education. The middle band schools, and the middle level of achievement is average - it is satisfactory. However, the one area we are concerned about is the bottom 20% of society that comes out of the educational system. Predominantly that 20% goes to work in the food industry. If you extrapolate that forward, if the food industry is not there, how do we, as a society, help to develop and train those people and give them a sense of worth? There is a broader social issue, but I do not want to push that too far at this stage.

2646.

Through the process we will also look at the ranking of the UK - what we call the Anglo-American model - which is very much focused on the academic route. We have three factories in France, and our experience there has shown us that French students in our sector come out very well qualified, with a broad based experience both of practical science and life. We have good experience of German factories, having two sister plants there. Through that experience we have found that students qualifying there have a good vocational and specialist training. They have a good experience of life and are much more rounded as individuals. I can speak personally here as a graduate of Queen's University's Food Science course. I thoroughly enjoyed that course, but on reflection I feel that taking a year out as part of a sandwich course would have better prepared me for a career in the food industry.

2647.

We have had experience of skills shortage at graduate level, and still do. We have extreme difficulty in recruiting and retaining graduates of suitable calibre in the industry. It could be technical or production, but we have to make a lot of effort to do that. Each year we see that becoming more and more difficult as there is competition from other sectors in industry. Also, some of the graduates are not of the standard we would want to recruit. I personally have run a number of job recruitment campaigns for purchasing and it took three recruitment exercises to come up with two suitable candidates. We do not believe in employing people for the sake of filling job, they have got to be the right people.

2648.

We very much believe in the partnership approach, and John Cromie will expand on that. I have touched very briefly on the placement year from Queen's University, which would be a very helpful thing to put into place, and there is also international placement. I know that some students are placed in the USA through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, or some associated overseas organisation, and we want to encourage more of that. There are places for 140 students each year, and we should encourage our young people to get as much exposure to the broader global market. When they return they are more rounded, and their minds are more open. Unfortunately, outside Northern Ireland, there is not much credence given to our political situation - the world is moving on. We are very aware, as an international player, that we must ensure that our young people have a global perspective.

2649.

To generalise, we recommend increased funding and specific courses, increased emphasis on sandwich years and international placement years, and participation in course setting between industry and the education providers, and the need for greater partnership with Queen's University and Loughry college. Again, we want to see the industry and the academic institutions working closely together to tailor the whole delivery to the needs. There is an opportunity for us to work and collaborate more closely together.

2650.

I will now pass over to John Cromie who will give some specific detail.

2651.

Mr Cromie: I felt it would be useful today to highlight some of the partnership approaches that we have had with local education providers and local companies in the Craigavon area, and tell you a little bit about the experiences we have had in that respect. My main function is working within the agricultural agri-processing division. I am based in Dungannon. There is also a human resources manager based in Craigavon for that division. I have had some experience in the Craigavon factory too, and I have been in Dungannon for the last three years. I felt qualified to come along today and speak about the Craigavon initiatives especially. I am sort of wearing two hats, because we do some of these initiatives in the local Tyrone area, as well with the Dungannon factory.

2652.

I want to highlight some of the core initiatives that we have been involved in - in partnership with local employers and educational providers as a kind of triangle approach. The wide-open learning initiative is one that Moy Park has been involved with in Craigavon. There is a computer suite available to us at the Upper Bann Institute. We have been working along with the North American Coal Corporation Organisation (NACCO), who have just been in here before us, and also Ulster Carpet Mills to recognise some of the computer skill shortages that we see in our industries and companies. We have been working specifically on this new initiative called the European Computer Driving Licence. We see that as important to our industry, as indeed do industries such as Ulster Carpet Mills, with the increasing use of automated machinery. Employees need to have keyboard skills to operate pricing machines and weighing machines in our factory. These are core skills that are important for our industries as a joint partnership approach. To date, there are around 60 people working towards that particular qualification, and there has been a high level of interest in the factory and the offices, and also from the salaried people in both. We see that as a successful involvement with other businesses.

2653.

We have quite a strong partnership with the local college, the Upper Bann Institute. We have a partner­ship approach in a number of different areas, including a numeracy and literacy programme. Alan Gibson has mentioned the bottom 20% of society, and that quite a large proportion of those people work in the food industry. We carried out a survey, as our paper to the Committee shows, and we also do induction question­naires when people join us. At that stage we try to assess their numeracy and literacy skills. The need for numeracy and literacy is very important, speaking specifically of Moy Park in this instance. We need people to be able to recognise date codes and products. Many of the sleeves that go on some of our products are very similar in colour, but there are differences in the ingredients in certain products. This is an example of how we see the importance of ensuring we have the right blend of numeracy and literacy. Employees have to count a certain number of products into a tray or box. For that reason we feel it is important to recognise difficulties in those areas, and we try to counter them.

2654.

Our solution was to train five in-house tutors - people that the operatives on the floor could recognise and relate to. They act as tutors and mentors to staff during their time with the company. We also use IT to try and remove the stigma of taking extra classes in numeracy and literacy, for example. We give people the opportunity to train for the driving licence theory test. When other workers in the factory asked them why they were leaving the factory, they would be told about the training. In that way we were able to bring those people along as well. We allow them to use the technology in the computer suite that we have built in the factory itself, which helps them to pick up those skills. We develop that further, and to try to discover what other skill shortages they had. To date this has been very successful, with 20 people having gone through in the last year.

2655.

We have been working at other partnerships, dealing with our multi-skilling approach to engineering. We work closely with the Upper Bann Institute, which took over the old Craigavon Training Centre where we would have got most of our apprentices in the past. We are now trying to multi-skill our skilled maintenance engineers and electricians, so that the maintenance fitters can work on electrics, and vice versa. We are taking that approach forward, based on the Engineering Training Council guidelines, with the NVQs at Levels 2 and 3 that a lot of the apprentices are currently working on. That gives us a greater degree of flexibility and skills. It enables people to gain new skills in order to justify higher wage rates. We have recognised that there are skill shortages among experienced fitters and electricians. Mr Gibson has mentioned that we have had to re-run and re-advertise interviews and job applications. We have also had the same experience in trying to get skilled maintenance people.

2656.

We also have some IT training at higher levels. Within the last year we have moved from Lotus Smart Suite to Microsoft systems. We had a need for training in Microsoft Excel, as we are no longer using the old Lotus 123 spreadsheet system. In partnership with the Upper Bann Institute, we are using their computer suite facilities to give our accounts and wages staff the opportunity to brush up on their skills, and learn the new Microsoft packages.

2657.

Finally, I will mention our NVQ approach in the factory. Moy Park is very proud of our NVQ work, which has been taking place over the last five years. To date, in the three factories, we have over 1,000 people who have achieved NVQ Level 2 in meat and poultry operations. A further 20 people went on to successfully take Level 3, and five people have achieved NVQ Level 4, and we are very proud of that. Through taking those people through Levels 3 and 4, we have won major portfolio prizes for them within the meat and poultry industry. This is recognition of our investment, and the skill levels that are flourishing in Northern Ireland. The NVQ approach has helped us to retain labour. It has also helped us to encourage people to take on new qualifications in work. Bearing in mind that some people join us with no formal qualifications, we are able to train them regardless of age, and take them through to NVQ level as well.

2658.

The Chairperson: That was an extremely helpful summary. You have identified literacy problems, and have gone a lot further - giving a useful written submission, and backing it up in your presentation. I detect much compassion in the way that you deal with this. It shocks me that even the most basic literacy skills are sometimes not present, such as reading labels or counting pieces of chicken.

2659.

When these young people come to you with their personal profile from school, does it perhaps indicate incorrectly that they have those skills? My second question is more serious. I am not going to attack the teaching profession. What more can the Government do to emulate what you are doing, and perhaps go further, making sure that when young people get to your stage, they do not have these appallingly low levels of literacy and numeracy?

2660.

Mr Cromie: The first indicator we get is the application form. With job clubs at local training and employment agencies and so on, it is not always the person's handwriting on the application form. On seeing someone's handwriting it is sometimes quick and easy to identify if there is perhaps a potential numeracy and literacy problem through his or her spelling, grammar et cetera. We do not place a great emphasis on that, for example, in shortlisting for interview. We tend to interview people and let them prove themselves to us socially.

2661.

Once we have identified that, the induction process is their next major hurdle. We have trained our induction co-ordinators to look out for people who are perhaps not taking part in the induction very well because of these issues and problems. We also get them to look at their written submissions when they are filling in their forms. There is some very familiar information that they can fill in quite quickly; they will struggle with other parts. The co-ordinators are trained to have a sympathetic approach - to speak to them, maybe try to isolate them at tea break and flag this up to them gently, if there is an issue there. They try to get someone to be a scribe for them, to help them through that docu­mentation. We make sure that we do not take away from their dignity and self-esteem with this approach.

2662.

For the Government to help, we need to work closer with our education providers, so that they become more acutely aware of our needs. In that respect, they can then lobby the Government, and perhaps set aside more information technology (IT) training with more packages based around numeracy and literacy issues. In that way, they are closing the gap before these people actually come to us. People from East Tyrone College of Further & Higher Education, for example, have recently approached us on a numeracy and literacy initiative. They will bring a mobile classroom to the factory, with a mobile computer suite based in the back of a lorry. They can bring people out of the factory to look at IT, and in that way tackle problems of numeracy and literacy.

2663.

Mr Dallat: You have gone to extraordinary lengths, even teaming up with a local primary school. Although the number benefiting from that is very small, it is unique to me and I have never heard of that before.

2664.

Mr Cromie: We also work quite closely with the business education partnership in all of the district council areas. I am involved with that partnership in Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough Council. Using this partnership we can play our part with the local schools and colleges. We give talks to the pupils, making them aware of the company. We also work on the Young Enterprise Northern Ireland system, sending some of our trainee managers to give them training experience in local schools. In that way, we can get the message across that Moy Park is a training organisation - and more than just a chicken processor. We can get rid of the connotations of a dead end and unexciting job. We talk about our sales, marketing and product development - the facets that use the latest technology, and which people may not be aware of.

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