Employment
When the West India Docks closed in 1980, unemployment on the Isle of Dogs rose to 40%. From the very first days of the Canary Wharf project the company understood that our relationship with the local community would depend on how far the Wharf was able to help local people into the new jobs and opportunities created by the development.
Our ongoing work on employment issues in rooted in the knowledge that there are no quick fixes – we are effectively helping to reconfigure a local economy which was running in one direction for the best part of two centuries. It will take time and active engagement not joust from Canary Wharf Group but from local training providers, the Council and others to create the sustainable local employment market we all want to see.
However results have been very encouraging. From around 1,000 local people working on the Wharf in the early 1990s, the number of Tower Hamlets residents with a Canary Wharf job rose to 8,500 by 2010, making Canary Wharf one of the largest centres of employment for local people.
Across the local docklands boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark, the total number of residents working on the Wharf by 2010 was 24,750 – about 25% of total employment. Within this figure about the same number of people lived locally before gaining employment at Canary Wharf and then moved away from the area, as those who moved into the area having got a job at Canary Wharf.
Local employment and access to work for school-leavers, mothers returning to work and other people with limited qualifications has been helped by the success of Canary Wharf’s retail offer. With around 4,500 people working in the shops and restaurants of the Wharf and many more during Christmas and other busy periods, there are lots of opportunities for people to get their first step on the career ladder.
This success has not come about by accident. Over the years we have set up, supported and funded a series of innovative projects to help local people get the skills and experience they need, along with the direct chance to apply for work on Canary Wharf.
At the very start of the Canary Wharf project, we worked with the local borough council and the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) to set up a local construction training centre at the old Poplar Baths, as the nearest Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) certification centre at that time was at Erith in Kent. All courses carried CITB certification and over 450 people qualified through courses in various construction trades. All successful candidates were offered employment on site.
Our ongoing initiative to help local people get into construction jobs was set up in 1997 as part of “The Partnership” an innovative Private/Public sector initiative between CWG, the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham and the Employment Service. The cornerstone of the Partnership’s work was the Docklands Recruitment Centre (DRC). DRCs focus was to ensure that local residents benefited from construction development at Canary Wharf. Over 10 years the DRC helped secure over 1900 construction jobs for local people. This has since been expanded with separate initiatives in Tower Hamlets and Newham.
Skillsmatch, a joint initiative between CWG and LBTH, was the successor to the DRC and incorporated all our work on construction employment. Skillsmatch helps local residents to access employment opportunities and pathways to careers. Its aim is to redress the balance between the significant opportunities created by the development and the remaining high levels of local unemployment. Staffed by LBTH employees with CWG providing rent-free, fitted-out premises in a premier retail location on Canary Wharf, it provides an on site service to help Tower Hamlets job seekers access employment in Canary Wharf and the wider Docklands area. Since inception in October 1997 it has placed over 6,300 local people into jobs.
In a typical recent year 612 local people were placed into work through Skillsmatch, 145 (24%) of which were in construction and skilled trades. Ethnic minorities form over 70% of its placements. This achievement has spanned a range of industries from banks and other financial institutions to London Underground, Waitrose and Stagecoach. Increasingly Canary Wharf Group itself is finding new employees through the Skillsmatch project.
CWG personnel managers play key roles in the Docklands Personnel Initiative, which involves local companies meeting regularly to exchange ideas and initiatives including the wish to interact more closely with local companies and employees.
Work Experience and Mentoring
CWG hosts over 40 Work Experience placements a year, normally for 1 – 2 weeks. Work Experience at Canary Wharf Group (CWG) is a great opportunity for individuals to develop key skills for their future employment and gain a valuable insight into the world of work.
CWG works closely with Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership, an independent charity that provides CWG with a list of available schools looking for Work Experience placements.
All work experience students are encouraged to develop key employability skills throughout their placement, including teamwork, communication, motivation, time management and business etiquette. We use a framework based on these areas to review and assess their progress.
As part of the Careers Academy UK scheme, a charity established locally in 2003 and now a national scheme, CWG annually hosts approximately six students for six weeks. Nicola Della Mura, Assistant Personnel Officer, who attends seminars and annual conferences, is an Honorary Alumni of the scheme. George Iacobescu, Chief Executive Officer, is a member of the National Advisory Board for Careers Academies UK.
Through a Business Action on Homelessness “Ready to Work Programme”, the company has provided work experience placements for people who have been out of the working environment for some time and who have had no previous fixed address. The scheme allows individuals to develop the skills and confidence needed for future employment.
Canary Wharf staff act as mentors to local students. During these mentoring sessions students can use the opportunity to obtain study guidance, suggestions as to possible career initiatives, or to discuss any matter with which their mentor can be of help. In addition, CWG participates in a scheme called “Partner in Business”, providing mentors to act as role models offering friendship, support and advice to students.
Visits from Local Schools - Canary Wharf Group plc also hosts visits from local secondary schools to help to prepare young people for the world of work. The aim is to build relationships, raise aspirations and increase awareness of the opportunities that may be available to them. Primary school visits are also hosted and we consider it helpful to give Year Six pupils an insight into how businesses work prior to their entry to secondary schools the following year. See the section on Education for more details.
Training
The Canary Wharf Recruitment & Training Centre (CWRTC), staffed by LBTH Employment Solutions/Skillsmatch and occupying two office buildings on Heron Quays over 8,000 square feet donated by CWG, is another joint initiative between LBTH and CWG. This groundbreaking initiative in which CWG as the developer is facilitating direct access for recruitment and training between tenants on its estate and local jobseekers, was set up in March 2006 as a one-stop shop for employers in Canary Wharf and Tower Hamlets to address their training and recruitment needs.
Run by an employment consortium ‘Employment Solutions’, it includes Tower Hamlets College Achieving Business Success team and the award winning Union of Construction and Allied Trades/Lewisham College Learning Centre which provides work related training for trade union learners.
Since the opening of the CWRTC in 2006, Skillsmatch has recruited for over 1,900 new jobs, delivered over 100 large recruitment campaigns, facilitated skills development courses for hundreds of young people hoping to obtain entry level jobs at Canary Wharf and, since January 2007, has introduced construction brokerage and training adding to the plethora of services it delivers. To date it has run construction training events for over 650 local people with 256 people placed into jobs in construction and security.
Large scale recruitment campaigns at the Centre have included employers from Hospitality Leisure Tourism and Travel (HLTT), the Security industry, NHS, Retail, Construction, Queen Mary University, Tower Hamlets Homes, Barts & London NHS and Tower of London, with many beneficiaries placed into work as a direct result.
Tower Hamlets College also delivers courses at the CWRTC, working with a range of local employers from small to medium enterprises (SME), the self-employed and recent start-ups, to larger companies. The provision has ranged from workforce development in Customer Service, Team Leading, Business Administration, IT, and Skills for Life (Literacy and ESOL), for the employees of organisations like Four Seasons Hotel, Serco DLR, Peabody Trust and SPLASH, to business support for local micro-businesses.
Perhaps the most exciting things about the CWRTC is that a permanent location has been identified where the Centre will be co-located together with the East London Business Place. As part of the Section 106 planning gain agreement on one of our major future developments, not only will dedicated space be made available for this new “one-stop shop” for local people and businesses, but an endowment is being created to fund its operation in perpetuity. To our knowledge this has never been done before and will ensure that local people have access to the economic opportunities on the Wharf whatever the future brings.
Learndirect, a pioneering learning partnership initiative between Canary Wharf Group plc and UCATT, was launched in November 2002 with its centre supplied and funded by CWG. The initiative was agreed with the Union of Construction Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT), the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Lewisham College. Learndirect, the first centre of its kind in London, has been cited as a model training centre for the construction industry and has since inspired others across the country.
The centre provides innovative and flexible learning in computer skills and the internet to meet the needs of local construction workers and is a Prometric Test Centre for the Construction Skills Certificate Scheme. Thousands of people have completed the test since the centre opened. Other courses available include Health & Safety Awareness, Union Training, Computers, “Skills for Life” and English Language for those who have come to work on construction projects from overseas. Now renamed The George Brumwell Learning Centre after the former UCATT General Secretary it was incorporated into the Canary Wharf Recruitment and Training Centre at Heron Quays in 2006.
The Canary Wharf Apprenticeship Programme was created in response to a need for trained and job-ready crafts people at Canary Wharf. Initially there was a need to identify speed-trained bricklayers for a mixed use project on Canary Riverside, a project in which Canary Wharf Group retained an interest, but influenced employment and procurement practices. Despite many bricklayers qualifying to NVQ Level III, very few had site experience or sufficient speed. Following a successful recruitment campaign, 16 people were successfully trained to achieve acceptable bricklaying speeds at the Laing Training Centre in the Royal Docks and 15 gained employment.
In the light of this, CWG decided, during its main construction development, to support long-term training for young people wishing to work in construction. 85 local school leavers joined the scheme, mainly in the traditional construction crafts of Bricklaying, Carpentry, Electrical Installation and Plumbing. Placements were made with sub-contractors at Canary Wharf and local construction companies. We appointed an Apprenticeship Manager to co-ordinate and oversee the scheme and to work as the link between the apprentice, the parents, schools, the employer and the off-site training provider.
The Canary Wharf Apprenticeship programme was set up as a Modern Apprentice programme based on the traditional indentured apprenticeships, with apprentices working for an employer in their chosen craft and attending college for theory and skills training. This combined the discipline and experience of a working environment with theory.
Following the construction apprenticeships, CWG now recruits a small number of apprentices each year across a range of disciplines including maintenance engineering, specialist security equipment, CCTV, business administration, personnel training.
CWG’s Security Department participates in the Community Orientated Policing (COP) course run by the Metropolitan Police from Tower Hamlets. The course is run several times a year, for a period of 5 days and is targeted at local 14 to 17 year olds. It aims to engage with young people who have offended, or are at risk of offending, to reduce anti-social behaviour, instil leadership and peer role modelling, encourage good citizenship, introduce them to police youth organisations such as Volunteer Cadets and a possible career in the uniformed public services.
CWG is an active member of the East London Business Alliance (ELBA), contributing and participating in every strand of ELBA’s skills and employment programme including delivering site tours and employability events for local jobseekers. CWG senior managers sit on ELBA’s various regeneration boards.
Since its inception in 2004, CWG has supported ELBA’s Community Affairs Trainee Scheme (CATS). This scheme was designed to help Tower Hamlets graduates gain employment experience in the field of community outreach. CWG has hosted three CATS so far and also a Human Resources trainee as part of the scheme’s extended programme. All of our placements have successfully gained employment following the scheme.
Graduate Recruitment
In 2009 following extensive consultation with local young people, Canary Wharf joined forces with the Young Foundation, University of East London and East London Business Alliance to offer a groundbreaking new scheme for local graduates.
Despite all the economic opportunity on the doorstep in both Canary Wharf and the City of London, Tower Hamlets has the highest rate of graduate unemployment of any borough. There are a number of reasons for this but many can be summed up by the fact that for many local young people, they are the first in their family to get to University. They typically have been living at home during their studies, lack work experience and do not have the contacts and networks that traditional middle-class University graduates enjoy – and that increasingly demanding graduate employers expect.
However, local graduates are resourceful, determined and have often overcome significant obstacles to gain their qualifications. They simply need a little extra help with the soft skills such as presentation skills, interview practice and writing CVs, plus sometimes the confidence to go for top jobs.
The first part of this new graduate scheme is called Fastlaners and offers a two week, intensive course described as “The Apprentice meets Dragons Den”. Housed in space donated by Canary Wharf Group at 1 Heron Quays, the project is run by the Young Foundation with a stellar group of business advisors, mentors and speakers.
The second part of the scheme is a Graduate Assessment Centre run by University of East London which offers work skills to UEL Graduates along with help in finding employment. This is also based in 1 Heron Quays.
As these two projects operate together, Canary Wharf Group is working with partners to develop a database of work placements for local graduates who have been through Fastlaners or the UEL Graduate Assessment Centre, giving them vital work experience to help in the search for permanent employment.