Skills and development
We invest in skills to help us recruit, retain and develop talented people and to address current and future skills gaps in our business and subcontractor base. We partner with subcontractors, suppliers, peer companies, and industry associations on many of our skills programmes.
Identifying skills needs
Changes to Building Regulations, the introduction of regulation such as the Future Homes Standard, and developments in technology mean the types of skills we need are changing. For example, we may need significantly more people qualified to install air source heat pumps in future but fewer gas engineers.
Our internal Future Skills Group is mapping the skills profile our business will need over the medium to long term, and has created a demographic profile for our key trades to identify potential gaps. The Group draws on insights gained from our building trial at Sudbury as well as dialogue with sub-contractors suppliers, trade federations and the Future Homes Hub to understand future skills needs, to assess whether suitable training is in place to address skills gaps and to determine how best to support our sub-contractor base. In 2024, it has been focused on attraction, development and retention of site skills.
Entry level roles
Encouraging young people and career changers into our sector is important to tackle current and future skills gaps. Entry-level roles made up around 5.5% of our workforce in 2024 and included:
- Trade apprenticeships – three to four-year placements for bricklayers, carpenters and joiners. Apprentices are supported by a dedicated Apprentice Manager. Apprentices work with our direct trade colleagues or our sub-contractors on our sites for four days a week and spend one day a week in college. After completion, some of our apprentices will be hired by our business units to join our directly employed workforce while we support others to secure jobs with our trusted sub-contractors.
- Management trainees – a three-year development programme with professional qualifications including trainee assistant site manager, commercial trainee, and technical trainee roles
- Graduates – placements, formal training, special projects and coaching over two to three years to develop our future leaders
We are also partnering with the Chancerygate Foundation to pilot 12-month paid internships and sandwich year work placements to help talented young adults of African and Caribbean heritage into the building industry.
We have an Early Entry Talent Board to improve consistency between our business units and ensure our programmes deliver the right results for our entry level people and for the business. We provide a skills matrix, performance review framework and transparency on pay and progression for entry level roles.
We offer tailored training to support our school leavers, including our Early in Career programme. This focuses on development in presence and impact, negotiation skills, giving and receiving feedback and working with others. Our graduates also participate in our Future Leaders programme developing skills in collaboration, innovation, project management, stakeholder management, emotional intelligence, time management, networking, problem solving and communication. It is important that our line managers create a supportive working environment and we have trained them in managing young people in the early stages of their career through our ‘Brightsparks’ programme.
We work with schools, colleagues and universities to promote careers in our sector. Each of our regional businesses has a schools engagement plan and we engaged with around 550 schools and reached over 300,000 students in 2024, as well as running webinars for parents/guardians. Regional businesses also engage with local universities and colleges. For example, through a partnership with Birmingham University we enable students on their Built Environment course to visit some of our active building sites, while our North Thames business has collaborated with the University of Hertfordshire and one of our suppliers to enable interior design students to create designs for some of our show home interiors.
We worked with other housebuilders and the HBF to create the Home Building Sector Skills Plan, which is driving the development of multi-trade skills hubs around the UK.
Supporting subcontractors to hire apprentices
With many skilled tradespeople leaving the sector we need our sub-contractors to invest in apprenticeships. However, our research showed that many smaller sub-contractors found it challenging to launch an apprenticeship programme or aren’t able to allocate an apprentice manager to run it.
We have partnered with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), the Home Building Skills Partnership and some of our mid-sized sub-contractors in groundworks, bricklaying and carpentry to address these barriers.
The CITB is providing consultancy support to help firms recruit apprentices, identify suitable colleges, apply for funding and manage their apprenticeship programme. It is being piloted with our regional businesses in Exeter, Manchester, North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands. Several groundwork contractors have committed to recruit apprentices as a result of the partnership and have accessed grant funding not previously identified.
Career convertors
Our career converters programme supports ex-service personnel to join our business. In 2024, former service personnel joined our Fast Track trainee assistant site manager programme, which will include training in soft skills as well as completion of an NHBC qualification at NVQ level 4 and other technical courses.
Training our teams
Our training focuses on: management and leadership; personal development skills as well as technical knowledge and capabilities. Our functional academies cover production, technical, sales and customer service, providing structured career and skills development.
We assess the impact of our training and development using metrics such as employee productivity and retention, build quality scores, customer satisfaction scores and sales figures. In 2024 our colleague survey showed that 88% of colleagues agree that the training opportunities available to them enables them to do their job well.
Our leadership training and coaching helps our senior colleagues to prepare for and thrive in leadership roles. In 2024, this included sessions for current leaders on their role in talent development and development days for aspiring managing directors. We also launched our Mentoring Programme for Highly Valued Experts, that enables colleagues to share their knowledge and experience to support the professional development of our teams. Mentees include newly appointed regional directors, potential successors to regional director roles and external short-listed candidates from diverse backgrounds.
We support our line managers with a range of virtual and face to face training sessions. These cover topics such as coaching, onboarding, performance management, development planning and managing underperformance.
Performance reviews
All new Directors and Managing Directors receive a 360 appraisal
Our Academies
Our functional academies cover production, technical, sales and customer service, providing structured career and skills development. In 2024, 149 employees were enrolled on or completed Academy courses. An Academy Board meets quarterly to review our academies, and how they are impacting business performance.
Technical Academy
This Academy, launched in 2024, provides structured knowledge, skills and competency development for each career path in our Technical function. This enables colleagues to understand the knowledge, skills and development required for their current and potential future roles and to identify development opportunities including on-the job learning, masterclasses or qualifications
Customer and Sales Excellence Academies
Our Academy of Customer Excellence for customer service teams covers our product range, Customer Journey, consumer protection legislation, technical standards, and health, safety and the environment. Our Academy of Sales Excellence builds the skills, knowledge and expertise of our sales teams to deliver excellent customer service and consistent sales in all market conditions.
In 2024, 60 employees were enrolled in the Academy of Sales Excellence, 40 in the Academy of Customer Excellence. We use customer feedback to assess the impact of our training.
Embedding quality through our Production Academy
Our Academy of Production Excellence training helps us enhance skills and embed our quality standards, provide formal job-related qualifications for Assistant Site Managers, Site Managers and Production Managers and create a culture of education and development for our site based employees to be the best qualified workforce in the industry.
Participants complete an NVQ at the relevant level, from construction site supervision to construction senior management and technical courses developed by the NHBC and adapted to reflect our business. These cover the NHBC warranty, effective snagging, defects prevention, site environmental management, leadership skills, commercial awareness and project management. We’ve also integrated development programmes to support progress to more senior roles and enhance our succession pipeline.
The Academy supports our production teams to deliver the high-quality homes our customers expect. Other business benefits include improved employee engagement and retention by providing clear career and development pathways for production employees. We track the impact of the Academy by monitoring customer satisfaction rates for build quality, NHBC inspection results (CQR) and turnover rates in our production teams.
We have also introduced a successor programme for aspirational Production Managers who have the desire and ambition to progress to Production Director.
There were 49 employees enrolled on the Academy of Production Excellence in 2024.