June/July - The Greets Green Partnership Legacy Website

WIDENING SKILLSAT WORKTwelveWilliam King Ltd on Union Road is a steel service centre withcustomers in the automotive, domestic appliance, buildingand packaging industries throughout the UK and Europe. Itsproducts are used to manufacture cars, washing machines,food cans, compact disc players and much more.The company is widely regarded as an industryleader in terms of quality and training, which is nosurprise when you see the company’s on-siteLearning Centre.months on since the William King LearningCentre was launched, many employees havedeveloped their skills in a whole host of areasboth for work and for fun, while local schoolchildren have been getting a real taste of thefuture. And as the company celebrates itscentenary, it has plenty of new plans to ensurethe Learning Centre continues to be a major assetto the workforce. Training & DevelopmentManager, Dipak Patel, explains more.“We had a portakabin for many years, which wasnot being used,” says Dipak. “We decided to turnit into a learning facility and successfully appliedfor funding from Greets Green Partnership totransform it.“The plan was to run lifelong learning coursesincluding basic skills and language courses. Wewanted to train our own workforce as well asencourage local schools to come in and doprojects as they are our workforce of tomorrow.”In just 12 months, workers have completed awhole variety of courses including fork lift trucktraining, stop smoking sessions with SandwellStop Smoking Service, IT taster sessions, healthand safety tests and quality audit training.Each week, there are drop in sessions on first aid,gardening, history and languages, plus employeescan take the European Computer Driving Licencequalification or undertake Skills Plus with SandwellCollege.Plans are now in the pipeline to run a powerpresstoolsetters course with Sandwell TrainingAssociation, offer a CLAIT computer qualificationthrough Sandwell College, run manual handlingtraining and waste minimisation presentations.“It’s important to us to improve the health ofemployees which is why we ran the stop smokinginitiative last year and will be offering healthassessments this year,” adds Dipak.“If staff learn - whether it’s subjects to do withtheir work or not – it helps both themselves andthe business. They become more motivated andhave broader skills. Having the Learning Centre onsite makes it so much easier for them to learn.”iTofind out more about the William KingLearning Centre call Dipak Patel on 500 4111.A TASTE OF WORKA group of Year 10 students from George Salter High School spent three daysexperiencing the world of work in March when the Learning Centre at WilliamKing became their classroom.The training, which was organised by Sandwell Education BusinessPartnership’s WorkWise project, saw the students finding solutions to a seriesof problems set by the company and presenting them using CAD – ComputerAided Design software. All their work will contribute to their GCSE Design andTechnology course and enable them to achieve a CREST (Creativity in Scienceand Technology) Award at Bronze level.During the three days, the students visited production areas and other parts ofthe factory to see where the problems they were working on exist. In additionto gaining a better understanding of how industry works, they also found outabout possible career opportunities.“The students came up with some very good ideas which we’ll be using in thefuture,” said Dipak Patel.iTofind out more about WorkWise, call Fiona Stone on 569 2347. If your schoolwould like to get involved with William King, call Dipak Patel on 500 4111.14 Greets Green Magazine June/July 2005