Experts at Focus Consultants are playing a key role in a £2m development to build 19 new industrial units, which have scope to create or safeguard almost 300 jobs in coming years. The company is providing a number of services for the North Kesteven District Council Blackwood Court development on
Unfriendly Working Environments are to Blame Employers in the industry might be surprised to learn that they only have five days to impress a new recruit before they decide whether to stay or go. A new study reveals that the majority of construction workers will decide to leave a new
Experts at Focus Consultants are playing a key role in a £2m development to build 19 new industrial units, which have scope to create or safeguard almost 300 jobs in coming years. The company is providing a number of services for the North Kesteven District Council Blackwood Court development on North Hykeham’s Teal Park in Lincolnshire, including support project management, employer’s agent, principal designer/CDM advisor and BREEAM assessor. Lindum Construction is building the scheme for North Kesteven District Council, which is part of the council’s commitment to attracting and supporting start-up businesses. The units will range in size from 500 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft and will be used for a wide range of uses from storage and distribution to general industrial premises. Trevor Newton, partner at the Boston office of Focus, said: “Focus Consultants is very pleased to have been appointed by North Kesteven District Council to be a member of the team building Teal Park, which should prove very important to the economic development of the area. “As a company, we provide a number of different services that are relevant for such developments, and professionals from both our Lincolnshire offices and our Leicester office are involved with this scheme.” The units are due to be completed by mid-February, with lettings likely to start around the New Year. Focus, which is based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, and has offices at Boston and Aubourn in Lincolnshire, and in Leicester and at Holborn in London, offers services to the property and construction industry, including building surveying, contract administration, party wall surveying, clerk of works, quantity surveying, project management, CDM services and BREEAM assessments and energy calculations and modelling. The company also specialises in funding and economic development including area regeneration strategies, funding applications, economic impact appraisals, business plans, and research and evaluation. Since 1994 Focus has secured for clients more than £953 million of grants for projects and businesses across the UK and delivered more than £1.3 billion worth of projects and programmes – making it one of the most successful businesses of its kind in the country. Teal Park is a strategic allocated employment site, granted outline planning permission in 2011 for a total of 133,720m2 of employment floor space, a hotel, public house, leisure and trade showrooms. It is home to Siemens’ industrial gas turbine service business which occupies around a third of the space. Under the GrowLN6 project, the wider LN6 area is a focus for coordinated partnership work by NKDC, City of Lincoln Council and the County Council to attract new inward business investment and expansion. The photo shows partners lined up to mark the official start on site. For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk
Unfriendly Working Environments are to Blame Employers in the industry might be surprised to learn that they only have five days to impress a new recruit before they decide whether to stay or go. A new study reveals that the majority of construction workers will decide to leave a new job within the first week if it’s not what they expected, and that unfriendly working environments are to blame. The research comes from CV-Library, the UK’s largest job site, and was conducted amongst a cross-section of over 4,000 UK employees to uncover how quickly they decide if a new role is right, whether or not they’d stick around if they’re unhappy and what influences them to make these decisions. Key findings revealed: 4% of recruits in the sector decide whether to stay in a new job within the first week Almost half (45.5%) would then proceed to leave the role within one month 3 out of 4 construction workers would leave a new role they didn’t like, even if they didn’t have another job to go to Employees working in construction are more likely to keep their options open; 7% admit they still actively look at other job opportunities for up to one month after starting a new role, even when they’re happy – this is higher than the national average of 48.4% It’s clear that, despite accepting a job offer, new employees in the sector aren’t loyal to a company until they are certain that the role is what they expected. The most common reasons as to why a recruit would choose to leave a construction role, include: Unfriendly working environments – over half (51.3%) admit this would be the most likely reason as to why they would leave a new job Poor work/life balance – 34.8% cite this as another main reason to leave Dealing with poor management (33.2%) Feeing the role wasn’t as expected (33.2%) Lack of opportunities to advance (25.1%) Being offered a better opportunity elsewhere (23.5%) Inadequate training and feedback (19.3%) Lee Biggins founder and managing director of CV-library comments: “The recruitment process doesn’t end in the interview room. Time is of the essence when on-boarding a new employee and it’s important that construction businesses understand how critical the first week of employment is. Organisations that are regularly experiencing the loss of new recruits should be taking the opportunity to uncover any flaws in their working environments. Our data shows that there are clear reasons a new recruit would leave, and most of them can be easily corrected.” Learn more about CV-Library at www.cv-library.co.uk.
