Unleashing Opportunities to Help our People Grow

Supporting and developing our people is core to our growth, and we invest in talent development throughout our colleagues’ time with us.

Our training includes a comprehensive programme of online, classroom, and practical courses delivered as well as leadership training for those identified with high potential. Our Emerging Talent Development Board comprises 11 of our top future talent who work closely with the Executive Team to contribute to strategic plans and deliver projects.

We aim to be a youth employer of choice, ensuring that young people are aware of Speedy Hire and the hire industry as an attractive career option. We work with organisations such as The Youth Group, Not Going to Uni, Early Careers Foundation and Springpod as well as schools and colleges across the UK offering activities such as mock interviews, CV building, skills training, mentoring and virtual and in-person work experience.

As a member of the 5% Club, we are committed to raising the number of apprentices, graduates and sponsored students on formal programmes to 5% of the workforce by 2026. We have received a silver accreditation from the 5% Club for reaching 3.3% of our workforce in ‘earn and learn’ programmes and a Gold from Investors in People for our ‘We Invest in Apprentices’ programme.

 

2024 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

Download our 2024 Sustainability Report for more detailed information on our Including Everyone pillar.

Our late careers mentoring programme, launched in FY2023, ensures the skills of our more experienced colleagues are passed on to trainees. We train and financially incentivise mentors across the business to work with first-year apprentices, facilitating a two-way sharing of knowledge and experience.

We champion the promotion of fair opportunities for all working with organisations to support those facing barriers and disadvantages in the recruitment market such as ex-offenders through Clean Sheet and our Career Transition Partnership with the Armed Forces Covenant. In 2024 we joined the Social Recruitment Covenant achieving a Gold member status for supporting inclusive recruitment and social mobility. For more information on our partnerships please visit our governance page.

We are also a partner of Bright Future Co-op, a national initiative that aims to fast-track survivors of modern slavery into high-quality employment. We have been working with Bright Future to train our recruitment teams and line managers to support modern slavery survivors into employment and to offer paid employment at Speedy Hire.

Green skills for today and tomorrow

We recognise the importance of sustainability training in supporting the green transition skills gap in the construction sector and have a target to train all our employees in sustainability by 2025.

In FY2024 we designed and launched an industry-leading ESG Business Partners programme, selecting over 30 people from every business division in Speedy Hire to go through a bespoke green skills training programme to help deliver our sustainability strategy. All our ESG business partners are now Associate members of IEMA and are our future sustainability influencers.

Our industry-leading ‘Building Sustainability Confidence’ programme, also launched in FY2024, is training all our people on green skills, further embedding sustainability into our business and culture, as well as providing our people with the critical green skills needed for our workforce of tomorrow.