North East HR&D Awards 2025 – Meet the partners: Esh Group

With a month to go until the 2025 North East HR&D Awards, Bdaily continues the countdown to the showpiece event by speaking to category partner Esh Group. Here, the organisation – which is supporting the Excellence in Leadership Award – emphasises the importance of creating a workplace where people feel empowered to thrive.

As a key player in the North East construction sector, Esh Group is committed to nurturing the industry’s future workforce.

With one of its founding companies dating back to 1970, when Jack Lumsden and the late Tony Carroll started out as a young duo before a merger saw the birth of Esh Group in 1999, the company has built its foundations on a set of local values that has seen the employee count surpass 800.

With a holistic approach to staff built on recruiting, training and retaining construction experts, a ‘growing your own’ model continues to be championed across the £261 million turnover firm.

While apprentices across the UK make up just four per cent of the employment landscape, Esh is bucking the trend with eight per cent of its staff undertaking apprenticeship courses.

Esh underlines the motto of practising what you preach.

In 2024 alone, 20 per cent of the business’ workforce secured professional qualifications, with 156 employees completing level two plant operations to level seven senior site management courses.

A further 380 days of T Level education were completed across Esh sites, as the company continues to ensure a lasting legacy in the region.

Esh’s social value team engaged with more than 14,400 students in 2024, to not only seek out the best young talent in the North East but raise awareness of the breadth of career opportunities available in a sector they might never have previously considered joining.

Darush Dodds, Esh Group director of corporate affairs and social value, said: “Esh utilises a multi-faceted approach to nurturing the future workforce by implementing key partnerships, robust apprenticeship programmes, promotions and comprehensive benefits packages.

“Our deputy chief executive Stephen Wilkie underpins Esh’s dedication to fostering excellence in leadership, progressively climbing the ladder since joining as a trainee engineer from school, and we’d encourage more businesses to consider this approach.”

Esh Group

For more information about Esh Group, visit www.eshgroup.co.uk

North East HR&D Awards

Click here for more information about how to buy tickets for the 2025 North East HR&D Awards. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities and how to become a North East HR&D Awards partner, contact:

Lesley Hampson – lesley@netimesmagazine.co.uk / 07748 908058

Dawn Owens – dawn@netimesmagazine.co.uk / 07789 666437

www.northeasthrdawards.co.uk

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