Environmental Policy

Employer responsibilities

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Employer responsibilities

We take our responsibilities as an employer seriously. We aim to provide a positive work environment for all our staff, whether they work in factories, warehouses, depots or offices. Our culture emphasises the importance of individual accountability, which means the personal responsibility of each of us towards those we work with every day. We are proud of this culture, which encourages openness and transparency within the business and has been vital to its growth and development since 1995. This culture is reinforced by our commitment to certain core principles:

  • Recognising by reward the hard work of all employees;
  • investing in training and development across the business; and
  • ensuring that recruitment, career success and progression are solely determined by an employee's abilities and achievements.

For further information on working with Howdens, click here.

Supporting Learning and Development in the Community

Howden Joinery's heritage and culture means we place a high value on the whole range of skills - technical, commercial and interpersonal - that are practised by local tradespeople. We are keen to promote the use of these skills in the workplace and interest in them in the wider community.

Developing apprenticeships and training at Howdens

During 2011, we continued our partnership with The Real Apprenticeship Company to further promote the use of apprenticeships within the workplace. The Group currently employs 11 modern apprentices in our Supply division and 157 within the depot network, with a further 29 being recruited currently. In addition, during the last quarter of 2011, our training team achieved "BTEC Centre" status which allows us to offer all employees the opportunity to achieve either a BTEC level 2 Award in Trade Business Services or a BTEC level 3 Certificate in Trade Business Management through internal job related training. By the end of 2011, 144 employees had successfully been awarded the level 2 award. As well as supporting staff to gain internal and external accreditations, our staff have also benefited from our investment in internal courses, with over 70,000 training hours completed during the year. Courses are offered in subjects ranging from HR skills to manual handling, from diversity & inclusion to health & safety, from environmental awareness to LGV and fork-lift truck driving. We plan to continue this level of investment in training in 2012. We also intend to maintain a strong in-house delivery capability in training as we continue to encourage staff to achieve training qualifications themselves.

Encouraging apprentices and traditional skills in the community

As well as a commitment to developing our own staff, at Howdens we believe that one way of offering support to the local tradespeople we serve and keeping their traditional skills alive is to give young people the opportunity to learn traditional skills and understand how to deploy them professionally. In pursuit of that objective we continued with two initiatives in 2011 which we had first reported in our 2009 Annual Report.

First, we continue to encourage our depots to build on their relationships with construction departments in their local colleges of Further Education. As well as donating discontinued products on which students can practise, many depots also sponsor end of year awards and prizes.

In 2009, we started a separate programme of support for colleges offering NVQ/Diploma courses that include a kitchen installation module. Through this programme, we provide the colleges with sufficient equipment for both practice and examination installations. A further four colleges joined the programme this year and we hope to recruit more in 2012.

Our second initiative has been to work with ConstructionSkills, the Sector Skills Council and Industry Training Board for the construction industry, to put in place a bursary scheme for new apprentice joiners. The scheme, which is now in its second year of operation, was the first of its kind in the country for any industry, and aims to fund first year wages for around 20 new apprentice joiners. The intention is to create new opportunities for apprentices in companies which would otherwise be unable to afford to fund apprenticeships. Other than stipulating that the money be used for apprentice joiners, Howdens has no involvement in choosing either the apprentices or the companies involved. All 20 bursary placements have now been awarded (2010: 12), with the students progressing well with both their college work and their work experience. Importantly, the scheme has meant that some businesses that were previously sceptical about the value of apprentices are now willing to consider employing apprentices on an unfunded basis given the benefits they have seen in this type of training.