Nurturing Home-Grown Workforce

A Stafford firm with a growing international reach is crediting its ongoing success to an ability to seek out and nurture home-grown talent. Employee numbers at PTS Group, a Non Destructive Testing (NDT) company, have doubled in recent years with the firm today proudly boasting a figure of 99 % of its technical staff being taken on locally.

It’s a policy that has encouraged raw young talent with little or no experience within the industry to take positive steps along a career path that has seen them flourish alongside the business over the company’s 30-year history. 

Technical Director Steve Baldwin said: “We have come a long way since the company launched by my father in 1995, but our commitment to excellence is the same today as it has always been and our ongoing success is down to an ever-growing client-base and our amazing staff that look after them so well. We have a long-held reputation for giving youth a chance with a focussed commitment on locally sourced recruitment, in and immediately around our home base of Stafford. This is borne out by the fact that 99 % of our technical staff are from the local area. Most were unsure about a career path, working as delivery drivers or in pubs for example, and did not even know that they could do an engineering career until they started at PTS Group. They came in with no experience but are now going on to have fantastic careers. Brothers Adam and Mark Bates are two of our success stories, joining the firm, going on to get degrees and have now become company directors. Matt and Tom Bates, cousins of Adam and Mark, and Rob Spruce are three more fine examples of industrious staff who came in and worked their way up from ground level. Essentially they all went from nothing to a self-sufficient Non Destructive Testing (NDT) technician on the road within three years and are now continuing to further their careers. They all have to renew their certificates every five years, in line with the necessary regulations, and each one now has about five certificates too, so it’s a case of ongoing CPD.”

PTS Group is totally committed to its accomplished in-house training system which also sees trainees sent to Sheffield to obtain recognised industry certification qualifications. One young employee who has taken advantage of the PTS Group in-house training programme is Guy Bailey. Guy wasn’t clear about what he planned to do as a career – dropping out of studying English at university. He completed one week’s unpaid work experience at PTS Group, was taken on as an employee and is now, in the eyes of the company, up to speed with people who have been there 10 years.

Guy said: “There is an awful lot of advice offered when you are close to leaving school but it is hard to process all that information – particularly as in may case when there was nothing really clear in my own mind about what I wanted to do. I decided to go to university to take English but was never totally convinced about what that path would lead to so ultimately dropped out. I live locally and was given the opportunity to go along for some work experience at PTS Group. It opened up a whole new idea of what the future could hold and even though it was just a week, I knew it was something that I would like to pursue and it gave me the chance of earning a wage while developing my knowledge of the company and having on-the-job training. I am grateful to PTS Group for the opportunity and have already learned so much. Everyone working there is very helpful and nothing is ever too much trouble to explain – supporting me as I have grown and developed in confidence during my time there.”

(Source: PTS Group)