Sustainability Report 2009/10

Training and Development

Recruitment

Manchester and East Midlands Airports partner with Jobcentre Plus to reach potential new recruits. We have a job centre onsite in Manchester and both airports have created interactive guides to working at the airport, which are made available to local jobseekers. We advertise all airport jobs on a central website and also attend job fairs to raise awareness of the career opportunities.

Launched in April 2009, the Airport Academy at Manchester tackles skills shortages in the local community, helping to lower unemployment levels and to provide suitably qualified candidates for airport jobs. Unemployed people living in the South Manchester Regeneration Areas and Wythenshawe are offered training and interview skills coaching and helped to find suitable vacancies at the airport. For those that are successful in securing employment, the support continues and they are encouraged to further develop their skills. In 2009/10, the Airport Academy delivered courses to 194 people and helped 31 candidates into employment with MAG or one of our airport partners. The Academy is due to be featured as a best practice case study by the Learning Skills Council.

Career Development

In 2009/10, we introduced our new online Group-wide Colleague Achievement Reviews. While reviews had been carried out previously, different approaches were used in different airports and divisions, and we wanted to create greater consistency as well as drawing on best practice from across the Group. The new reviews were designed, with input from staff, to give everyone the opportunity to talk about their performance with their line manager at least twice a year. They both acknowledge achievements and support discussions about further development opportunities.

We set ourselves a target for 75% of all employees across the Group to have had at least one Colleague Achievement Review by the end of March 2010 and exceeded that target, achieving 84%. Our target for 2010/11 is 100%.

Skills gaps and opportunities for career development are identified through these reviews. We have in-house trainers who provide courses on subjects including security, IT, customer services and business management. Anyone who manages other people also takes our management development programme. Across the Group, 531 courses were held internally in 2009/10, with 2,264 people attending these. In addition, MAG spent £1.6 million on external training in the year, equating to £621 per employee.

In September 2009, we launched Airport Learn in Manchester to support lifelong learning. The Airport Learn centre is run in partnership with our employees' trade unions and Trafford College. The courses on offer range from languages and IT to money management and career planning. They have been chosen to encourage all employees to expand their skills and enhance their future employability. By the end of March 2010, 253 employees had taken Airport Learn courses.

Opportunities for learning are also found through job shadowing and community volunteering. Volunteering benefits both our staff and our local communities and our network of Community Champions ensures the volunteering opportunities match our employees' training and development needs. As an example, Manchester Airport encourages employees to become school governors. The schools benefit from our employees' business experience and the employees benefit from opportunities to build confidence and develop new skills such as budget management.

Employee Volunteering at Manchester Airport

	2007/08	2008/09	2009/10	2010/11 target
Hours	1,223	1,722	2,268	2,200
Volunteers	-	137	319	300

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