COVID-19
We are doing everything we can to ensure we have continuity of business, while heeding the very latest Government advice. We monitor this daily and adapt our procedures and messaging immediately to any changes that are required. We would like to express our sympathies to everyone who has been affected and continues to be affected by the COVID-19 virus.

We would also like to show our support to our teams and key workers who are working tirelessly across the country.

For more about how Willmott Dixon group are responding to the everyday changes of Covid-19 please click here.
-15 Feb. 2016

We’ve more than achieved our Young People Target!

Fantastic news! We have more than met our ambitious target of ‘enhancing the life chances of 3000 young people by 2015’.  The final total figure is 3390, which is quite brilliant!

When we set our target we wanted it to be a challenging one, so we created a system that recognises that our activities have varying impacts.  For example, if we give work to a previously unemployed young person, that is transformational and counts as one point towards the target.  Providing an in-depth one-to-one ‘interview skills’ learning session, while valued, will not have the same level of impact – improving the individual’s chances rather than transforming them, so this would count as one-third of a point.  We don’t count interventions such as giving careers talks to large gatherings, as we believe that these, by themselves, don’t make enough of a difference.

Using this methodology, we calculate that together, over the last three years, we have:

  • Transformed the life chances of 1378 young people
  • Improved the life chances of 6053 young people

Included in this figure are:

  • 1293 young people for whom we gave a work experience opportunity (of which 317 were with us for over 6 weeks and 147 were from very disadvantaged backgrounds).
  • 1948 young people who attended in-depth interview skills and cv writing events which included mock interviews and detailed feedback.
  • 251 young people who were mentored by one of our people.
  • 75 young people who we helped to learn to read through long-term reading buddies schemes (6 of them at age 16 just before their GCSEs).

And some of the individuals we have been able to help include:

  • Mark, a local young resident, who was taken on as an apprentice. He has had to overcome many barriers in his life and is a carer for his mother.
  • Ellie, a single mum, who was struggling to find employment before she won an apprenticeship with Willmott Dixon. Although it’s not easy juggling a full-time job with caring for her daughter, Ellie says that if she hadn’t won the apprenticeship she would be doing unskilled work instead.
  • Kyle, whose work experience with us led to an apprenticeship with one of our supply chain partners, giving him a sense of purpose and a new confidence.
  • Josh, who was offered full-time employment with a supply chain partner after attending a traineeship programme we ran with the Sheffield Youth Justice Service and South Yorkshire Police for young people previously on the wrong side of the criminal justice system.

10,000 young lives improved by 2020

Examples of how this was achieved include mentoring 1,948 young people on job finding skills, plus providing work experience placements to a further 1,293.

We’ve raised our bar even higher now and our target is to improve opportunities for 10,000 young people by 2020. You can see more about this in a new film introduced by Rick Willmott below:

 

If this area is of interest to you and you would like further information or advice, please contact Anna Koukoullis, who would be delighted to assist.

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