Persimmon says that it is the first house-builder in the country to offer its own national vocational qualifications (NVQs).
The company has been accredited by awarding organisation NOCN, the National Open College Network, to deliver NVQ courses as part of its new Persimmon Pathway Programme.
Initially created for site managers and sales staff, the intention is that the NVQ programme will eventually extend to every area of the business and all 6,000 employees.
Paul Curry, Persimmon鈥檚 group training manager, said that the business was starting with its construction site managers. 鈥淎s part of our site manager pathway, Persimmon was a pilot organisation for the new NHBC assistant site manager programme, providing a progression route for new trainee assistant site managers,鈥� he said.
鈥淭aking this one stage further, we are now commencing a programme to qualify around 350 of our site management team with relevant vocational qualifications.鈥�
He continued: 鈥淭he first NVQs we will offer through our own assessment centre will be site manager construction at levels 3, 4 and 6 鈥� a first for the housebuilding industry. All new starters already on the NVQ pathway will be registered onto our own internal programme of development which will allow them to continually develop their careers.鈥�
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