Greencore Pizza Training Links With Deeside College To Equip Employees With Skills For Life

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Deeside College has been working with Greencore Pizza since 2002 when the need for basic skills training for their employees was identified. Since then the partnership has provided staff with training in a variety of basic skills, and has delivered the ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages course to the high proportion of workers at Greencore who do not have English as a first language.

After this training partnership became established, Deeside College encouraged Greencore to apply for The Basic Skills Employer Pledge, which has been developed as part of the national strategy to reduce the substantial number of adults in Wales with poor literacy and numeracy skills.The Basic Skills Employers Pledge means that an employer pledges to: “help employees with poor basic skills to improve these basic skills”. To achieve this status, Greencore worked with Deeside College to develop and carry out an action plan. As a result of all this hard work and dedication to the staff at Greencore, and the support from the union, the status has been achieved, and the new Learning Centre made possible.

The new learning centre at Greencore Pizza on the Deeside Industrial estate was officially opened by Jane Davidson AM Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Welsh Assembly Government on Friday 14th January 2005. The facility has been set up with twelve computers, presentation equipment and other learning resources, all funded through the Wales Union learning Fund, to facilitate the provision of basic skills training for all employees.

Leading up to the opening of the new learning centre at Greencore Pizza, Deeside College ran a series of open day and evening events for the 600 staff located in Deeside and a further 1000 placed around the region. The open day/evening sessions allowed employees to drop in, have a go at using the facilities and have an informal chat with college tutors about their training needs. These events generated a lot of interest and have helped the college tutors working with Greencore, tailor the courses they offer at the learning centre to the needs of the staff.

Fran Sullivan, Basic Skills at Work Development Officer, from Deeside College, said, “The facilities at the learning centre will enable Deeside College to extend the current programme of basic skills training opportunities provided for all Greencore employees. Courses on offer include English, Maths, Computer Skills and English for Speakers of Other Languages. The college is also developing a tailor made course linking basic maths skills with the use of spreadsheets, to meet the needs identified during the open day sessions”.