Cornwall Glass & Glazing Profits from Training

Martin Saint is used to seeing through things - whether it's the panes of glass his company makes, or the claims of those who'd have him believe that training is a waste of time and money.

As the general manager of Cornwall Glass & Glazing in St Austell, Mr Saint believes the benefits of training to employers like him are transparently obvious.

In the three years since he began sending his staff to Truro College for training, his turnover has shot up by 16 per cent, his employees are staying instead of straying, and his order books are so full that his business is running at full capacity.

‘It's impossible to say that the reason our turnover has increased so dramatically is purely as a result of training - but it must have played a major part,’ he says.

‘When I first came here three years ago, we lost 17 members of staff in a year. Then we introduced training with Truro College, and we've just gone more than 12 months without losing a single full-time member of staff.

‘Because our employees feel they are valued as people and not just as a name on the payroll, they realise that the company does care about them and is interested in their development.’

Mr Saint took a suck-it-and-see approach initially, persuading the family-owned company to let him go for training so that he could build on his management experience and get something on paper, too.

‘Once I started to see the benefits, I realised it would be good for the rest of our managers - and once they were trained, we thought it would be worth doing it with the rest of the company.

‘There were some people who thought that training would cost us money and that if we trained our staff, they'd go of and leave us, but the upshot was quite different.

‘Before we started training, we would make about 5,000 sealed units a month. Since we began training, we've just made 10,000 units in a month.

‘We've really embraced the training - so much so that we've just been given a Learning & Skills Council award for training. It recognises what we've been doing, and we've picked up so many enquiries about work that we can hardly cope with it.

‘Nationally, the glass trade is struggling like mad with overcapacity, but here in St Austell we don't have enough. We couldn't have done that without training.’

Mel Colton-Dyer, Truro College's Senior Business Development Adviser, first analysed the firm's training needs then helped it find funding to help pay for it.

All the managers were sent on bespoke half-day courses designed to change their mindset and help them think and work as a team.

Since then, all of the firm's staff have either had training or been offered it, with some going on to higher level training to make the most of the company's policy of promoting from within. Many of them are studying for NVQs, with workplace tuition and assessment from college staff.

‘The Truro College staff are so helpful and so amenable,’ says Mr Saint. ‘When the phone's ringing here and our staff need to answer it, they're happy just to sit there and wait until we're ready.

‘We don't even know they're here most of the time - until we look at the balance sheet, that is!’

Web: http://www.cornwallglass.co.uk