In the early 1980s, I took a job as a trainee mechanic working on racing cars. Fast cars have always been a passion of mine, to the extent that I left Scotland and relocated to Oxford to do that job. Like many of my ilk, though, I suffer from that well-known West of Scotland disease. I had to get a job, and a real job at that!
As it turned out, I was offered a technical apprenticeship back in Scotland, this time at Ravenscraig in Motherwell. However, when I walked in to the office to await the interview, there were loads of teenagers – the other candidates – flicking gum around and generally misbehaving. The behavioural gene seemed to be missing in these people.
There was just so much immaturity in that room, and if these were the kind of people required I didn’t want to be a part of it. I turned on my heels and never made it to the interview. Going home was by far the better option.
Fast forward to today, and my company Sim Limited. We offer design, installation and maintenance solutions in respect of intruder alarms, access control and CCTV systems, fire alarms and total building management systems.
In truth, Sim Limited is the second security business that I’ve run, and I’ve now been working in this sector for 25 years. Like many, I ‘picked up’ security skills as I went along. I didn’t really have any formal training, and pretty much learned the ropes from others.
Training partnership with Pointer
When I launched Sim Limited seven years ago, I wanted to make a conscious effort to help build skills into the equation for my employees.
Like every other right-minded security business, we needed and desired to maximise our investment. We determined to take on people with a level of qualifications behind them and/or an apprenticeship in the bag, but as I mentioned we also needed to upskill existing members of the team and nurture their talent.
That being the case, we decided to partner with Pointer’s Training Academy and send our people there to learn the necessary skills. Let me tell you the plan has worked, and with interest. Two of our apprentices have since won national awards when pitted against candidates from the majors, including Chubb and ADT.
On top of that, the first school leaver I took on way back in the day as part of the Youth Opportunities Programme has now graduated to become a director of the business. Another of those apprentices now sits proudly as one of our team leaders.
Attainment of Investors in People
As a company, we have gained Investors in People status, and now have four full-time engineers on the books as well as three apprentices. We’re continually identifying and refining our training requirements to keep pace with developments and fulfil our workforce’s skills requirements (not to mention those of our clients).
Interestingly, no females have approached Sim Limited for an apprenticeship. Working on the premise that girls are more intelligent and better-skilled than men, that’s an issue we must address.
On an equally serious note, there’s tremendous satisfaction to be found in watching people grow within the business. To this end, we deliberately operate a ‘no blame’ culture in the company so that individuals are not afraid to try out new ideas. They learn by doing.
I guess you could argue that, in any company, nature will ensure the better people will always rise to the top, but I believe it’s beholden upon company leaders to recognise the fact that, with help, all employees can maximise their potential and, in turn, benefit their employer.
Changing our approach to education
On that note, we desperately need some positive reinforcement of this truism in our schools and local colleges. We’re not teaching our youth about the importance of them having practical skills, and we’re not imparting those skills. Lots of the boys that appear on our doorstep have no practical abilities whatsoever. For an employer in this business, that’s frightening.
In my view, we need to place less emphasis on the computer-driven learning that’s so ubiquitous these days. Today’s children aren’t reading any more. They just cut and paste text into a file from whatever they’ve found on the Internet and feel like they’ve learned something. They haven’t. We need to better equip our children for real life (Ed’s Note: I totally concur with these thoughts).
Like a good many other companies, we’ve experienced problems over the years with our training providers. At times, it’s difficult to pick the better ones. We have had instances of trainers bullying our candidates. Policing this issue is not easy.
At all times, we have to remember that our business is built on the one-man-in-a-van style scenario, and we have to monitor that. We need to give the guys the training they need to deal not just with the job itself but also with the customers and the business side of the equation. Only in this way will they develop.
For sport read commerce
As an organisation, we chose some time ago to sponsor the Glasgow School of Sport. It’s the only institution in Scotland that affords the nation’s children who exhibit prowess in sport the opportunity to shine and, hopefully, become a ‘great’ in their chosen specialism.
Sport is nothing if not a great leveller. If you can succeed in that kind of cut-throat, hugely competitive environment then you can pretty much succeed in any walk of life.
There’s not a great deal of difference between that model and the world of commerce. Sim Limited is always trying to attract youngsters who demonstrably want to achieve in life. We’re operating a culture of constant learning, with positive reinforcement of that learning at all times.
Sim Limited is a young company. The average age of our employees is 27. At 47, I’m the oldest member of the gang. Not many middle-aged and older people come to us looking for employment, which is probably a direct reflection of the fact that there was such a lack of focus on training back in the early 1980s.
That said, those people have been schooled in The University of Life. You can’t buy experience. It just needs a little moulding now and again, that’s all. One should never look to throw the baby out with the bath water.
*Andy Sim is the managing director of Sim Limited
