Many of its top people will have started out as graduate trainees – others have worked their way up from the quayside.<\/p>\n
Richard Steele, ABP’s group training and development manager, says: I can’t imagine a situation where we would say we would like to have you as a port manager but you don’t have X degree or qualification, so we will have to give the job to someone else instead.<\/p>\n
“We are looking for an all-round person. Our model is based around individual analysis.” Entrants accepted on ABP’s graduate trainee scheme won’t necessarily have a particularly portsbased degree – but when they arrive at work, they learn the lot.<\/p>\n
“We start with a year’s worth of experience. That means driving forklifts and doing night shifts and getting rained on on the quay, so they get a core understanding and they know how to operate the kit,” says Mr Steele. While the main focus is on operations, the trainees will also spend time in the marine, property, finance and engineering departments.<\/p>\n
“What we are looking for is very much a fundamental understanding of the business we do,” he says. “They are already coming in with a degree level qualification so we use that as a way to identify academic standard.Thereafter,we loosen up a bit in terms of development. “In most cases we will support them through some kind of further qualification – something like logistics and transport or a diploma in business studies, for example.”<\/p>\n
However,he emphasises, the training programme is very much experience-led:”We are not looking to qualify people in excess. We are looking at people who can run the business, who can work with From graduate schemes to careers fairs, port employers need to think outside the box to attract staff customers and understand operations and the revenue-generating areas of the business.”<\/p>\n
“If you are cutting deals or agreeing to take a particular cargo,you have to have an understanding of what impact that will have on the port and operations – for example, do we have storage for it? What are the extra costs of handling some cargoes?”<\/p>\n
ABP’s approach also works with people coming ashore or into the industry from other management, says Mr Steele.”If there is a particular area they may be a little short on, then we will top them up in terms of education or training – so it is a practical, pragmatic approach. We are certainly not into sheep-dip training.”<\/p>\n
Because ABP is very much focused on the idea of growing internal talent,there are real opportunities for the right people, he adds. “But you have to fight for those opportunities and you have to be very good.” He also makes the point that qualifications are not everything and they do lose value over the years.<\/p>\n
“The strength of our management team is based around promoting from within. We are looking for people who can handle two sides of the business: running the operational business and the ability to work with customers and build relationships.”<\/p>\n
For ongoing or refresher training ABP uses a range of options, including some off-the-shelf courses and modules as well as commissioning courses to meet more specific needs.<\/p>\n
It also operates an internal coach mentoring system in which more experienced managers work with and mentor less or differently experienced managers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing internal talent is the key focus for Associated British Ports (ABP), which owns 21 ports around the UK, including Southampton, Immingham & Grimsby and Hull. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concessions-investments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6781"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}