Utility Week

20 | 21ST - 27TH SEPTEMBER 2018 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Utility Week Awards winner case study Staff Development Award Award winner: United Utilities • Title of project/initiative: the "one cur- riculum" approach • Annual company turnover: £1,704 million • Number of directly-employed staff: 5,500 Entry criteria: • Quality of entry (clear, evidence-based) • Clear goals set for the project that were met or exceeded • Evidence of ongoing investment in staff development • Measurable benefits for the business • Evidence of going beyond business as usual The 2017 Utility Week Awards were held in association with CGI and Capgemini. See www.utilityweekawards.co.uk/ for more details and news of this year's categories. For sponsorship opportu- nities contact Utility Week business develop ment manager Ben Hammond on benhammond@fav-house.com or 01342 332116 for more information. What the judges said... This was a wide-ranging programme deeply embedded in the company's culture. O ver the course of the next decade, United Utilities (UU) anticipates that almost half of its workforce will have either le or retired. This creates a challenge for the company in terms of how it maintains and transfers the knowledge and skills of its current people to the next generation. The company's "one curriculum" approach focuses on succession planning within the organisation. Its aim is to have 50 per cent of its operational new starts come from apprenticeship roles. What was the scale of the initiative? UU is the UK's largest listed water company. It provides water and wastewater services to seven million people in the northwest of England. The company has 5,500 employ- ees, including 142 apprentices. Since 2013 its apprentice recruitment has grown by 77 per cent. The company's internal technical train- ing team was developed in 2012 with a team of just four specialist trainers. However, since 2016 the success of the training devel- oped and delivered internally, as well as the company's commitment to apprentice development in line with its "one curricu- lum" approach, has seen demand increase dramatically. This has resulted in the expansion of the team to 12 technical training specialists across the seven disciplines of water treat- ment, water network, wastewater treatment, wastewater network, electrical, mechanical, and most recently instrument, control and automation (ICA). In September 2016, UU recruited its larg- est ever intake of apprentices across 11 disciplines to deliver effective succession planning across the region. In the UK, it is one of three utility companies to hold a direct government funding contract and the only water company listed on the Register of Approved Training Providers. What was the target group? UU's "one curriculum" approach targets every person in any role across UU – from first-year apprentices, long-serving engi- neers and graduates to senior leaders. The company chose to implement this approach across its entire workforce to ensure a con- sistent service, promoting equality and opportunity across its diverse population. It now has comprehensive curriculums of spe- cific knowledge and competence criteria to match the requirement of all of its roles. The company carries out an annual "occupational capability review" to help it understand the current skill set of its exist- ing workforce. One area the latest review highlighted was that there is a shortfall of instrumen- tation, control and automation engineers for the projected future needs across the business. Due to the specialised nature of the role and the demand for this skill set in other industries, securing this highly sought aer technical expertise can be difficult. UU's solution is to "grow its own". The company invested in a specialist ICA engineer from within its business, putting him through teaching and assessing qualifications in order to pass this expertise on to the next generation of instrument and ICA engineers. A dedicated ICA training area was com- missioned and constructed at the company's state-of-the-art educational facility in Bolton (see photos, right) and in September 2016 UU became the first in the sector to launch the ICA industry standard, taking on eight apprentices to commence the new Indus- try standard, to be trained and assessed at the company's new facility by its dedicated training specialist. Why this approach? The need to build its own training capability was born from the desire to increase work- force skills and quality. UU's "one curricu- lum" approach ensures its entire workforce – from apprentices to engineers, graduates to senior leaders – has access to an individ- ual learning and development plan, tailored to the requirements of their specific job role at every stage in their career. "The aim is to have 50 per cent of operational new starts come from apprenticeship roles." It's a people business United Utilities won the 2017 Utility Week Staff Development Award for its 'One Curriculum' approach to training. Utility Week looks in detail at the initiative.

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