Welcome & About Whistl
Apprenticeship opportunities We recognise the value of offering a quality apprenticeship programme. Our apprenticeships play a key role in the development of our entry-level employees, providing new starters with the skills and confidence to advance their careers. This is a win-win situation for Whistl, as it also enables us to establish a pipeline of excellent talent in our business, enhancing our long- term success. Our Leadership and Management apprenticeships empower team members to achieve promotions or gain additional responsibilities through their roles; throughout 2022 and 2023, 42% were successful in doing so. In 2023, we took a pragmatic approach to our apprenticeships. We worked hard to understand the challenges we had faced in previous years and applied what we had learned to optimise our approach. In 2021 and 2022, we experienced a considerable number of drop-outs, so this year, we focused on selecting individuals with strong levels of interest and commitment to create greater benefits. Our approach proved successful, with our drop-out rate among Leadership and Management apprentices reducing from 45% in 2022 to 18% in 2023 with 25 individuals completing the apprenticeship scheme. We recognise that there is always progress to be made and, moving forward, we aim to identify suitable individuals by conducting a skills gap analysis. We are incredibly proud of the hard work and dedication that our apprentices exhibited in committing to develop themselves both personally and professionally. We also received immensely positive feedback from participants, who noted that the apprenticeship programme had enabled them to build their confidence and decision-making skills.
My Academy At Whistl, we believe in continuous learning for our employees throughout all career stages. We aim to fulfil this through the provision of our learning management system, My Academy, an online learning platform that employees can visit to undertake relevant training. Through My Academy, our employees can access a range of different training and skills development courses. In 2023, we issued a new course on environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics. The objective of this course was to improve our employees’ understanding of ESG and to inspire them to promote environmental and social goals both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Whistl’s aim for 2024 is to see at least 80% of our employees complete this training, taking us closer to fulfilling our strategic commitment to providing training on ESG to all employees. However, we are conscious that during the past year, My Academy was primarily used by our employees for mandatory training courses such as induction and compliance training. Recorded training averaged one and a half days per employee over the course of 2023. In the future, we are keen to attract further employee engagement by providing additional insightful training modules on the platform. On top of this, we will encourage our employees to record their training hours; this will provide accurate data so that we are able to measure progress clearly against our 2025 target of two days of training per employee each year. We also aim to review and evaluate recorded activities to monitor their effectiveness, continuously improving our approach to learning and development.
Whistl’s ESG strategy
“ The feeling of accomplishment after completing my apprenticeship was worth all the hard work. I’ve learned so much and now hold skills for life that not only help me massively in my professional life but my personal life too. It’s been great fun to join remote workshops with peers from other work areas that hold a mutual interest as everyone could openly express their thoughts, understandings, challenges, ideas, struggles and breakthroughs in work without the prior feeling of being judged.”
Valuing colleagues
Fulfilling opportunities
Preserving our natural environment
James Moor, Operations / Departmental Manager (Whistl Contact Centre) and Former Apprentice
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
Appendices
21
2023 ESG Report
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker