Four Basildon residents offered full time employment through Morgan Sindall’s Social Enterprise BasWorx
Four Work Academy trainees from Morgan Sindall’s Social Enterprise BasWorx have completed their six week work programme and have been offered full time employment.
From an initial 11 prospective candidates, BasWorx identified four trainees (all Jobcentre Plus referrals) who excelled during the programme. Trainees benefit from the guaranteed interview process, and on this occasion all four candidates were successfully offered paid employment contracts as a result of their hard work.
The BasWorx social enterprise is a not for profit organisation which creates training, apprenticeship and employment opportunities to Basildon residents, whilst delivering a skilled painting and decorating and maintenance service. Any surplus made will be re-invested back into the business or local community.
The first cohort recruited earlier this year focussed on school and college leavers in the 16-19 age group and resulted in two local teenagers offered a paid traineeship potentially leading to an apprenticeship later in the year. The second cohort was aimed at unemployed residents with trainees aged from 19-54.
The BasWorx programme included one week of classroom based H & S training, the CSCS test, one week painting and decorating skills training followed by a four week work experience placement element.
To celebrate their commitment and success on the programme and to show support for the newly formed BasWorx team, Morgan Sindall and Basildon Council hosted a small awards celebration event on 2nd June. All four candidates have now been offered employment contracts with BasWorx and will study for a Level 2 Painting and Decorating Apprenticeship, which will take one year to complete.
Their first day of paid employment was on Monday 5th June and they are currently utilising their newly acquired skills by decorating office space in one of Basildon Council’s Sheltered Accommodation Scheme.
One of the trainees, Chris Gloster said: “It’s been good to find a training course like this which provides genuine opportunities for people and it has certainly boosted my confidence”.
Morgan Sindall’s Supervisor, John Ryan added, “we’ve built up a good team here. They work well together and support each other with every task; the comradery between them has been great. A couple of our younger trainees on the Multi-skill Course have spent a couple of days working with the team to learn about painting and decorating. For them to be passing on their knowledge to other trainees at such an early stage in their programme has been fantastic for their morale”.
