The Right Staff with the Right Skills are right on your Doorstep

Tasty Jobs is a new initiative designed to ensure local people are aware of job opportunities at your food business and have all the pre-employment training you require to be immediately ready for work in food manufacturing.

Food processing as a sector has suffered from a poor image against other industries and is often overlooked by UK-born job seekers, many of whom also lack required industry skills.

Recruitment agencies, even in a difficult jobs market, have increasingly had to resort to filling many vacancies with skilled workers from overseas.

Tasty jobs will initially concentrate on increasing the pool of local people ready and able to work in local jobs – starting first in the meat industry where transitory migrant staff currently account for more than a third of the workforce.

The project will provide a template for other food sectors facing similar local recruitment difficulties and skill gaps.Several meat companies have already lined up to back the Tasty Jobs plan to put a minimum of 600 currently unemployed local people through pre-employment training specifically geared to the sector to guarantee they are industry-ready as well as job-ready.

Pre-employment training and Apprenticeships to get Britain working

The lack of a readily-available pool of local people with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to work in food manufacturing has led many businesses to rely on temporary agency staff when meeting peaks in demand.

Tasty Jobs is designed to open more jobs to local UK nationals by significantly increasing the number of local people who have the skills and knowledge to be both ready to work in food manufacturing and ready to work your way.

It enables local unemployed people to gain the experience and skills needed to break into the jobs loop without fear of compromising unemployment benefit. It removes the financial insecurity and time-consuming red tape associated with moving on and off the unemployment register into temporary positions.

Tasty Jobs links government departments, labour agencies, organisations supporting the unemployed and participating food and drink businesses in a highly specific pre-employment programme. Initially running in the meat industry, the Tasty Jobs programme will act as a template for other food sectors.

The project provides for specialist on-the-job training in a real working environment that replicates a live working line without disrupting production. “Production ready” trainees who successfully complete the course are then offered full-time employment with participating companies and the opportunity to enroll onto an Apprenticeship.

If you would like to be involved inTasty Jobs please contact Faith Castle: f.castle@foodanddrink.nsacademy.co.uk