Good Business - John Hamilton, CPO, Bellrock Group

How do you drive good business? We spoke to John Hamilton , CPO of Bellrock Group, to delve into the HR perspective.?

“First, you must ask what sort of business do we want to be? Do [you] want to be a race-to-the-bottom business? Or do [you] want to work for clients that know the difference between cost and value, and want to do the right thing? For us, it’s the latter.”

In the original Q&A, we discuss the employer’s duty of care, the importance of paying a fair and decent wage, and the business benefits that come with putting people first. Here in part 2, we unravel other challenges, starting with…

How can we close the gender pay gap?

We’re at the start of this journey. For context, at Bellrock we have 250 men in vans. I say ‘men in vans’ because every single one of our mobile engineers is a man. That translates directly into the gender pay gap because engineers are paid well. There is a lack of women in engineering roles and at senior management level. You can join the dots and see that is what drives our gender pay gap. It’s challenging to recruit good senior people and good engineers. This challenge is made even harder when you’re inadvertently disenfranchising half the workforce by creating the impression that you are not an open, fair, and equitable organisation, even if you are. We can’t just shrug our shoulders. We need a plan. We’re due to launch our first ever graduate and technical training programme. Women will be prioritised in these programmes. We’re also considering the ways we can use our apprenticeship levy, to put the money that we can barely spend towards rectifying the challenge around gender representation. That’s a key focus.

How do you get other disadvantaged and underrepresented groups into the workforce?

Keeping hold of good employees is tough. Finding new talented ones is harder. So, it’s a no brainer we need to do a better job of retaining the people we’ve got and striking a balance between the contract of work and the psychological safety contract around trust. That means we need to create a diverse workforce and workplace - whether that’s an office, home, or hybrid environment- ?that celebrates differences in a way that brings people together. It's about being an organisation that people want to be a part of.

We’ve done some work on this within our social value policy. There are hundreds of metrics out there, but we are focussed on 14 that we think most closely align to the business we are. That includes people who are long-term unemployed, ex-veterans, those with disabilities, and mothers returning to work. We’re also working with The Inspiring Leadership Foundation to create work experience opportunities.

The Apprenticeship Levy: an honest appraisal?

In February this year, we recruited our first ever L&D manager – this has transformed our approach to apprenticeships. Prior to that, the pot was getting bigger and bigger, and we were struggling to spend it. Persuading managers to give up time away from their day-to-day job to support apprenticeship programmes is an ongoing challenge, but we can combat that by educating people around the benefits and incentivising them with personal and professional growth opportunities that come with being part of such programmes.

The toughest market for us is fire safety – fire engineers post Grenfell are like hen’s teeth. Five of our current engineers are doing fire degree apprenticeships – that’s working professionals who are working towards becoming chartered without paying for the privilege. We couldn’t fund it without the levy. So, it’s a good thing but it does come with challenges.

In terms of how things could change, they could open up the courses a bit – to include NVQs, for example, and be less onerous with the terms of the programmes. If the apprenticeships were more vocational in nature, frontline colleagues would benefit.

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We are looking for contributors for the second Good Business series which starts in January 2024. To register interest in taking part, please email me: [email protected]