Learning at Work Week
At CCF, the importance of learning and supporting our colleagues in their career is pivotal; not only to further their development but to ensure we keep up with the latest industry knowledge and training to continue delivering the market leading service our customers know us for. We recently caught up with a number of our colleagues throughout the business who discussed how their continual learning throughout the industry and at CCF has benefitted them in their role today within the business.
Tom Spencer, Branch Manager at CCF East Birmingham, discusses the learning opportunities he received at CCF when moving within the Travis Perkins Group from Travis Perkins:
“CCF really made me feel welcome. The induction process was seamless; I met the head office team, the regional team [and more] - they’ve all supported me and played their hand in setting up the new branch in East Birmingham. They’ve furthered my learning and allowed me to introduce a new team into the business in a really efficient way".
This emphasis on gaining valuable experience across different roles within the industry and the transferable skills that come with this was furthered by Leanne Joseph-Grimwood, Branch Sales Coordinator at CCF Belvedere, who said:
“Having a career spanning of over 15 years, I’ve managed to get myself into quite a few roles…from sales to warehouse, transport to admin, I have done them all and they have all contributed in the sales person I am today. The relationships that I have built within many teams have helped me in my day to day from processing an order to knowing how much will go on a vehicle…it has really helped me with the people that I work with today.”
Moving from a regional to a national role within CCF, Andy Moores, Technical Manager for the North Region, emphasised the importance of continuous learning in his role and working collaboratively with his team, noting:
“I’m constantly learning…I have undertaken the ASFP level 1 training course for fire protection, the JPA U-Value calculator course and in typical CCF form I am working collaboratively with my technical team. We’ve got over 100 years experience within us and I’m leaning on them day to day and learning from industry experts”.
Craig Hayward, Head of National Sales at CCF, further supports the focus on learning from within our business and the extensive knowledge our colleagues already hold to extend to our customers. He explained:
“Just over 6 years ago I joined the construction industry coming from a role that was completely unrelated. Since joining CCF, my learning has been supported in many different ways - conversations with different stakeholders both on a regional and then into a national level, with our commercial teams, our marketing teams and different areas within the business…CCF has supported that learning of understanding our marketplace by facilitating introductions to our stakeholders, our customers and our suppliers alike.”
Zach Ayre, Business Development Manager, not only spoke about the learning opportunities gained throughout his time at CCF, but how these skills helped him transition from a regional to a national role within the business as well as using this knowledge to further educate his region:
“The support that CCF gave me to help transition my own personal development from a Regional Account Manager role into a National Sales role as Business Development Manager, was the opportunity to go on the Pareto Sales Executive Level 4 course to which I came out with a distinction and through my work that I put into the course I was actually submitted to be a finalist in the National Apprenticeship Awards.”
Zach also discussed the transferable skills learned throughout his apprenticeship such as managing stakeholders and public speaking skills being vital to his current role:
“ …it’s enabled me to have the confidence to go into a room full of people I don’t know, go and talk about the business and what value we can bring to that customer…”.
Also transitioning to a new role was Ben Humprhies, Sustainable Products Assistant at Travis Perkins plc. When discussing the support and learning opportunities CCF offered in moving across the Travis Perkins Group to a specialist role, Ben noted:
“I was offered support from CCF on day 1 when my line manager listened to what sort of role and career I wanted to work towards and actively and tirelessly sought for opportunities and roles both within CCF and Travis Perkins plc…"
"From my role at CCF I learnt how to convey ideas effectively and confidently with people that I hadn't met before; this has helped me to learn how to continue this into my current role, dealing with category managers and people external from Travis Perkins plc.”
For more information on Learning at Work Week and and the latest news from CCF, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.