Member Article

JCT600 helps young people from The Prince’s Trust to ‘Get Into Automotive’

Patron of The Prince’s Trust, JCT600, is continuing to play an active role in giving young people from all walks of life a chance to succeed, this time by running a ‘Get Into Automotive’ initiative which has resulted in three of the participants being offered ongoing roles with the Yorkshire-based family motor retailer.

The Prince’s Trust helps 13 to 30 years olds who are unemployed or struggling at school to transform their lives and, in 2016, JCT600 made a four-year commitment to help by providing work and training opportunities for these young people across its network of 50 dealerships. As part of its support for the youth charity, JCT600 devised its own four-week ‘Get Into Automotive’ programme, offering work placements and, potentially, ongoing employment to 12 young people in Bradford and Leeds.

The company’s HR team, together with the participating dealerships and The Prince’s Trust, developed a programme which would provide an introduction to working in the motor industry via classroom training and also real life experience. Groups of three of the selected young people were allocated to the BMW/MINI Bradford, Mazda Leeds, Vauxhall Bradford and Volkswagen Bradford dealerships to get a first-hand taste of working for JCT600. Supported by an on site ‘buddy’, they spent time working across all areas of the dealership from sales and service to parts.

Ten of the young people succeeded in completing the four week placement and three of these have now been recruited into JCT600’s service teams. Asim Hussain, 21, of Keighley takes on the role of technician at the company’s Vauxhall Bradford dealership, while two of the other young people have been given fixed term contracts with the intention that they will then join JCT600’s apprenticeship scheme later in the year. The trainee apprentices are Conor Asquith-Smith, 19 from Bradford who will join Volkswagen Bradford and Patrick Wall, 16, who will be based at Porsche Centre Leeds.

Katie Saunders, HR director for JCT600, said: “When we became patrons of The Prince’s Trust, one of our key aims was to make a positive difference to the lives and opportunities of young people in our communities. We’re proud to say that our ‘Get Into Automotive’ initiative has succeeded in doing just that.

“Almost 30 young people came along to our selection day and we were really impressed by their enthusiasm and potential. Our celebration of the ten candidates who completed the programme was truly moving – they talked about their time with us, giving heartfelt thanks and many saying that it had been a life-changing experience for them. To subsequently have been able to offer three of these young people jobs is the icing on the cake, both for them and for us.”

As part of its ongoing work with the Prince’s Trust, JCT600 is planning to host other work placement schemes later in the year as well as fundraising for the charity.

In addition to undertaking the four-year mentoring programme with The Prince’s Trust, JCT600 is also committed to providing work and training opportunities for young people through its apprenticeship scheme – the company has recruited more than 135 apprentices over the last four years to join its 2,200-strong team. JCT600 has also been listed in the Sunday Times’ ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list in recognition of its outstanding levels of employee engagement.

With 50 dealerships throughout Yorkshire, the North East, the Humber, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, JCT600 sells 18 of the world’s most respected brands such as Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, BMW, MINI, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Vauxhall and Volkswagen.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Emma Kilmurray .