The Mitie Podcast: Finding your passion, a kilometre underground

Series 2, Episode 1: How do exceptional people contribute to high-performing places?

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Chris:  Welcome to the High-Performing Places Podcast from Mitie, hosted by us, the Workplace Geeks. My name’s Chris Moriarty…

Ian: And I’m Ian Ellison.

Chris: And we’re back, visiting some of the most unique workplaces you can imagine, and meeting some truly inspiring people, to explore the theme running throughout this second series: what makes a place truly high-performing?

Ian: The question we’re asking on this episode is ‘how do exceptional people contribute to high-performing places?’ And to answer it, we’re heading over a kilometre underground, deep into a working mine, to visit a truly unique laboratory, before returning to the studio to learn from different Mitie folks about the connection between great people, their professional development, and how the ripples they create enable colleagues, organisations, employment initiatives… and ultimately society, to benefit.

Chris: Well, he says ‘we’. Ian’s been down there. I haven’t. So, I’ll be here in the studio asking questions, whilst he takes us through what he found down there, and who he met. So over to you, Ian.

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Ian: So here I am, one very bright and crisp autumnal morning looking down on a site called ICL Boulby.

We’re right on the coast of the North York moors, just off the side of a main road. It’s just before seven o’clock, because I’ve gotta go for a site induction.

The occasional early morning workers heading to work, as you can hear. Really, really close to one of the most picturesque North Yorkshire seaside villages, called Staithes. And who would’ve thought, that probably less than a mile as the crow flies, there’s a laboratory where experiments from all over the UK and beyond take place, a kilometre under the ground.

So I guess it’s time to head for the gatehouse and, uh, take that induction. Then I can go and see what it’s all about and Mitie’s involvement in whatever goes on down there. It’s quite exciting actually. As much as it’s beautiful up here, it’s a visit I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now.

Chris:  So, a bit of context – Boulby Mine’s been operational for over fifty years, mining potash – the sort of stuff you’d find in fertilisers – since 1973, then more recently transitioning to polyhalite, whilst producing rock salt throughout its life. Now that means multiple generations of local people have worked here and some family members still do.

Ian: And inside this long-running operation lives another very different one: an ultra high-tech one – Boulby Underground Laboratory. A bit like Russian dolls – a meticulously clean experimental facility nestled within a heavy-industrial workplace – both existing in symbiosis: the mine providing the environment and access for the lab to function effectively.

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Jonny: Welcome to Boulby Mine. We are now 1.1 kilometres beneath the North York moors. We’ve just gone back 250 million years in geological time. Uh, and you are, I think, I dare say within the 150 deepest people in the UK right now.

We’ll head for the lab, it’s about a 10-minute walk away through the mine tunnels.

Ian: My guide for the day was Jonny Gutteridge.

Jonny: My name is Jonny. I’m Engagement Officer for Boulby Underground Laboratory. I’ve been working here for about two years now.

I’m also an underground supervisor here at the lab, which means I have some additional health and safety responsibilities while underground.

We as Boulby Underground Laboratory, we are a government funded research facility and we essentially rent a bit of space on the mine site, in the mine, where we have this laboratory to host low background particle physics, robotics testing, and everything else that we do.

And then Mitie, we have, uh, a few of our employees are employed by Mitie and they work with us onsite full-time, in the lab.

One thing that always makes me happy is seeing people’s reactions to visiting the lab for the first time.

We are in Britain’s deepest mine right now. It’s not like any environment that most people have experienced before. There may be other laboratories that, the interior of looks similar or comparable, but the entire package, the entire experience is something that very few people get to experience.

So, anything beyond these white gates, this is STFC territory. This is Boulby Underground Laboratory. So, you just about see right at the end there, there’s another set of white gates and this 100-metre stretch with a lab right in the middle. This is our space.

Ian: Right. Because this doesn’t look much like a lab at this point.

Jonny: No. Still looks a lot like a mine. Yes. Yes, you’re right. Uh, this is where we store a lot of our materials, but shortly we’ll be going into our lab, into the interior space.

So we’ll just blow our shoes off now. Um, this isn’t part of a cleanliness procedure. Uh, just housekeeping.

Ian:  So, picture big, wide underground tunnels, with walls and roofs of rock salt, salt dust underfoot, inky black darkness as you peer back down the tunnel you walked in from, but bright, white LED lights illuminating the lab facility. And as you walk from the operational mine and through the labs external area, you approach this big, white, single storey modular building. And as a first stage of keeping the internal lab space clean, just before you enter, you have to blow off the dust off your shoes… which I forgot to close my mouth for.

Ian: It tastes salty.

Jonny: It does. Yes.

Ian: It literally tastes salty!

Jonny: This dust is salt.

This is our dirty mess, as we call it, so dirty because we’re still wearing all of our dusty orange mine attire, uh, and mess being ‘mess room’ where we eat, where we have a drink and where we chat.

Ian: If you’d blindfolded me, and spun me around three times, and brought me somewhere and said, right, open your eyes… I’m not in a mine now. The doors look a bit kind of like prefabricated, but basically it’s a meeting room. It’s a lunch room. It’s your dirty mess.

Jonny: It is. And if you ask a lot of people that work here, they’d say that once you’re underground for a few hours, you do sort of forget. It’s nice and air conditioned in here compared to the mine, it’s a lot hotter out there. It’s about 20 degrees in here.

So broadly, you can split the lab into two halves. We’ve got the clean side and the dirty side. The dirty side is where we currently are. The other half of our lab is what we call the clean side. This is where we have to wear a clean room attire over our mine clothes to stop the dust from our bodies getting into the main hall of our laboratory.

Chris: Ian. Please tell me you haven’t gone all the way to look at a mine’s lunchroom. You told me you were heading to a ‘secret’ underground lab… I thought you had something special up your sleeve. Why is this such an important facility?

Ian: So impatient. Jonny was just getting to that bit…

Jonny: Being underground for science, is a unique but a wonderful thing. There are only about 10 underground labs like ours in the world, so it’s a rare breed of science.

And different researchers want to come underground for different reasons. The particle physicists, for example, want to get away from cosmic radiation, from natural radiation that’s abundant on the surface of the earth. And we don’t notice it as humans. But particle detectors certainly do notice it.

Ian: So it’s like noise in an experiment.

Jonny: Exactly like noise in an experiment. Yes. But by coming a kilometre underground, you filter out the majority of that radiation. So down here it’s a quite a radio quiet environment. It’s like a quiet place in the universe, where we’re experiencing a million times less cosmic radiation than what you would be on the surface.

So, to a particle physicist, this is great because you can run really, really sensitive detectors and detector technology, such as detectors that look for dark matter in a super, super quiet environment, which is perfect for low background particle physics.

We now host a wide variety of multidisciplinary science, we have teams of researchers visiting who are interested in the geology and using that for renewable energy storage studies as well as seismological studies.

We also have people coming underground because they want to test technology in the demanding mine environment. Things like testing Mars Rover technology, testing instruments that are going to be, sent to extreme environments, for example.

It’s dusty, it’s hot, the terrain is unpredictable. And it’s a great place to therefore test Rovers, and motors and robots. We had a robot dog come down two years ago, as a part of a robotics testing program.

Chris: Was the robot dog still down there then? You know how much I love robots!

Ian: Sadly not. Just some lovely humans when I was down there. But listen up, because we’re off into the clean side now, and there’s a really important person to meet…

Jonny: So this is our changeover room. We need to put on some clean room attire to make sure that we can enter the rest of the lab.

I’ll give you one of these. Your new hard hat. Your old one’s dusty. This one’s clean.

So, this is our clean mess. This is the UK’s deepest underground flushing toilets… ta da, I’m sure that’s the reason you’re here.

So this is our main hall. This is where the majority of our particle physics experiments are kept.

Ian: Okay. So very clean, but also quite noisy.

Jonny: Yes. I mean, to me, quite soothing, ambient scientific hum. Of whirring and beeping, and all that sort of stuff.

Ian: My God, you’re such a nerd.

Jonny: [laughter] It’s about 80 meters, I’d say from one end to the other. Um, it’s about four meters tall.

We do both pure and applied science. So, some of our projects are very much about the fundamental pursuit to understand the universe around us. But some of the other projects are more about technology research, technology development.

And then some of our other projects, got very immediate, practical applications if you can understand that.

Ian: So, what does this remind you of then Chris – any pop culture references spring to mind?

Chris: Always. Uh, it’s the Room of Requirement from Hogwarts, this.

Ian: That’s exactly what I thought. A low cosmic radiation Room of Requirement. But Jonny hadn’t read those books, so that reference was completely lost on him.

Jonny: It’s a very versatile space. Yeah.

Chris: Okay, so, a workplace within another workplace, creating a perfect environment for both theoretical and applied science, with people clearly passionate and proud of their work. But this gets me thinking about the dependency on Facilities Management. Just like what we saw in season one at John Radcliffe – a hospital without hygiene can’t be an effective hospital. Similarly, without FM keeping a cleanroom meticulously clean, means no effective experiments…  so what about the people operating and looking after it? How on earth do you end up working somewhere like this… and what sort of qualifications do you need?

Ian: Excellent point, well made. Which brings us rather nicely, to Becca.

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Becca: I’m Becca Meehan. I’m a clean room technician at Boulby Underground Laboratory.

I’ve worked here for about two and a half years. The villages around the area are traditionally mining villages, and I think the mine itself gave a lot of job opportunities past and present to generations of families.

I started off as part-time, just a regular underground cleaner. And then it progressed a bit into a more technical role.

It’s essentially just making sure that it’s as clean as physically possible and just making sure the particle counts stay super, super low so it doesn’t upset any detectors or any of the science that we’re, we’re doing.

Ian: So to Chris’ point, how does one end up doing a role like this, in such an unusual workplace?

Becca: It came up as a part-time cleaning job, when I was 18. It was very basic, coming down twice a week. Making sure everything is tidy and clean. It wasn’t quite as in depth as it is, as it is now.

It was very surreal. It took, took quite a bit of getting used to, just the whole environment in itself. It’s a lot different to what you’ve ever experienced.

The darkness got to me the most. If your lamp isn’t on you, you can’t see your hand in front of your face. It’s not just like, um, having your curtains closed in your bedroom. It’s pitch black.

The lab itself, it feels almost futuristic, especially once you’ve got all your gear on.

I like how hands-on it is. Everyone’s really friendly and there’s plenty of opportunities to join in, even in things that you’d expect would be too complicated or something that only smart people would do. Everyone gets involved no matter where they come from, sometimes students coming straight from college or scientists that have done PhDs. Everyone gets involved.

Ian: So you might be able to tell, Becca would much rather be rolling her sleeves up with the team than having me point a microphone at her. But the more we talked, the more her own story started to unfold…

Becca: I didn’t go to college or university, I struggled a lot with it. I was a bit worried about where I was gonna end up because I mean, you always hear that you need to have your education to get anywhere.

So, taking on this part-time role was mainly just to get a bit of money until I figured out where my feet were. So, I’m quite glad it’s progressed a bit more. I feel like I’ve really found my spot, figured out where my career is hopefully gonna be going.

I don’t plan on leaving, not anytime soon. A lot of the stuff that I’ve learned is very specific to here. Like, this is my place, this is what I know. I’m hoping my role can progress a bit more. I’ve found a strange passion for cleanliness and clean rooms. Um… it’s not something that I ever expected myself to say.

Ian: And then, in that magical way an interviewer can only hope for, Becca decided to share a much more personal part of her story.

Becca: Before I got the job, I was terribly anxious. Like, I couldn’t leave the house on my own or anything. I was really like, struggling. So, when I first joined, it took a really long time for me to get used to it all. Um, there was multiple times I had to get ridden out because I was in the tunnels and just would freak out.

Not because of the workplace, just because… it was just in my head. And that’s kind of a reason why I didn’t go to college or university. I mean, I tried it, and it was just, it was not feasible. Like I just, I couldn’t, I couldn’t deal with it all.

So it was kind of like a last… a last straw, trying to come here and trying to get this done. And I remember one time I was coming down and I thought, if I don’t get through this day, I’m just gonna… I’ll quit. I’ll do something else. And I’ll figure it out. But then I, I think that was the first time I managed to do a full shift, without any issues.

And then I was like, well. Now I’ve gotta get through it because, I put that pressure on myself and then I actually did it, and I was like, this is actually now possible. So, I guess for the advice is, don’t worry too much about… obviously education is important. For some jobs it’s crucial.

But a lot of stuff you can kind of get through just… through experience.

Ian: And even though Becca might not acknowledge it, the experience, resilience and sense of belonging that she now has, form a foundation for so much more.

Becca: I’ve just completed an apprenticeship in facility operations, online and done through work.

And yeah, all of my knowledge has genuinely just been through asking people many questions and just getting involved in and just, learning on the job.

Chris: That’s a pretty inspiring story. Now, something I often think about is the nature of these FM relationships. So you’ve got people on both sides of that contract – the customer, and the service provider. And I think it would be really easy for people to be treated like an external contractor, or the frontline staff just to do the job. But it’s clear here that Becca feels like an integral member of the team. So, is that feeling shared?

Ian: Well, to answer that I think we’ll turn to Toby, for one last perspective from Boulby Underground Laboratory.

Toby: I’m Toby Cuniffe and I’m the Infrastructure and Maintenance Manager here at Boulby Underground Lab. So mainly manage preventive maintenance, reactive maintenance, the general maintenance of the lab.

We host a variety of science, from physics to biology experiments. And to be able to host that, they need a place to do it. And part of my role is to provide what they need.

The opportunities and the people who you meet and the interesting things they do and how, passionate people are. They’ve spent their whole lives just thinking about this one experiment. And that’s a pretty, pretty cool thing. And then the relationship we have with Mitie and Becca, we don’t see it as them and us.

Ian: Now language like this makes me always want to dig deeper – is it just rhetoric, or is it the reality, with genuine evidence? And in this case, I think it’s clear…

Toby: So, Becca gets not only the training that Mitie’s given, she also gets given the training that we provide, and the mine provide. So, it’s doubled up, which is a really, really good opportunity.

Becca’s role as a clean room technician, most people would just think, oh, cleaning, keeping on top of ensuring that it’s keeping to its standards, but no. She was the person who put a lot of money’s worth of equipment within a tank. And if it went wrong, it would’ve gone wrong big time. But they asked her specifically to do it. And it went smoothly. Which I think again is another really good thing from working with us as STFC and Mitie.

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Ian:  So that’s Boulby Underground Laboratory – a fascinating workspace and amazing people, combined to create a unique example of a high-performing place. And there’s an emerging theme here – exceptional people don’t just come from traditional education and qualification backgrounds.

Chris: Yes. Now, the FM sector has a rich history of talent from a diverse range of backgrounds, yet there’s still a sense that it’s a career of chance – ‘accidental FMs’. Now Ian, we’ve both been part of initiatives in the past to raise FM career awareness, but it’s still often the case that young people leave school first, THEN discover it as their careers develop. It’s rarely a career of choice.

Ian: Yep, I agree, absolutely. When I was a university lecturer, almost all of my students were already working in the sector, and going back into education alongside full time work was a huge commitment.

Chris: Which is why I think apprenticeships are really interesting and such a powerful vehicle. Now Becca talked briefly about hers, and the more you know, the more it feels like they are crucial to exceptional workplace careers. So to learn more, we spoke with Kyeisha and Sam, two young leaders at Mitie who built their careers through the apprenticeship route and now help others to do the same.

Sam: I’m Sam Berry. I’m an Operations Manager at Mitie. I work in a Technical Services pillar. And I look after a team in a Midlands region. Team of around 50 engineers and a few supervisors. And we service and maintain all our electrical, mechanical, and building fabric assets across our customers.

Kyeisha: I’m Kyeisha Adams. I’m the Soft Services Team Leader for Mitie Defence.

Every service line that you can possibly think of, we have in the defence sector. We work in MOD in Corsham. Quite a busy, demanding job, but it’s really good and I enjoy it.

Sam: 19 years I’ve been with Mitie. So straight outta school, into Mitie. They looked after the Trafford Centre over in Manchester at the time. I started my apprenticeship there, did a couple years working there.

Four-year apprenticeship, which was a heating and ventilation apprenticeship. Gained an MVQ level three and then got my gas qualifications. So, gas engineer, HVAC engineer.

Kyeisha: I used to work in BNQ, so retail. The moment I left school, I worked there up until I was 19. So, for me, I really liked the customer side of things.

I think the satisfaction of helping people, was the best thing. I did college at the same time. I left school – academically, I didn’t like that kind of learning. I didn’t wanna stay at school any longer than I needed to. I tried college. I did loads of different courses because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.

Sam: Did another few years on the tools, learning the trade to get to grips with the job and the role. It was very different to what a lot of my friends at the time were doing. I had the cash in the, in the bank, they were all doing traditional sort of learning in college, and things like that.

So yeah, I had the, I had the money, and I was learning and getting a qualification at the same time.

Kyeisha: I saw this job advertised and then, I applied. I started and then, I kind of just got involved in things that weren’t my job. So, it’d be my boss would be going somewhere, and I’d say like, where are you going? Can I come with you?

I fell into meetings with senior managers and stakeholders. And I think it got to a point where one of the Defence International Directors for Mitie, he sort of recognised I wasn’t at my full potential, pulled me to one side and suggested an apprenticeship.

It all happened very quickly. It was very scary, but for me, I think it was, if I didn’t have someone telling me ‘you can do a lot more than what you are doing’, I don’t think I would’ve ever done it, purely because I didn’t recognise that in myself.

So, my first one was um, a level three facilities manager. What you would be expected to know if you were to go into a managerial role within FM. That apprenticeship then led me to being promoted, into the job I’m in now.

Chris: So Sam’s practical qualifications were embedded with his new technical role. Kyeisha’s opportunity materialised in a slightly different way. But with both, you can see how their career ambitions start to grow with their developing capabilities. For Kyeisha, confidence played a major role. For Sam, it was resilience and determination.

Sam: From quite early on in my career, I always sort of wanted to get into those management roles. I was probably too, young, or not experienced enough. But that’s what I wanted to do. So, I made sure everybody was aware that that’s what route I wanted to take.

I got knocked back a couple of times, but looking back, it was probably really good for my development, my growth, building that resilience that you need, in those kind of roles. That really gave me the determination then to succeed.​​

Kyeisha: I didn’t come to work to, to have a lot of responsibility. But over time, that changed drastically. I think, there’s a lot of stigma around, ‘you need to go to university to be successful’. And I, I don’t think that’s the case. I think if you don’t want to go the traditional route, you don’t have to, and it’s okay. You can do it alongside your normal job, wages aren’t gonna change.

So I’m on my second one now. I think it’s built my confidence a lot. I’m half Jamaican. And I grew up around a predominantly white family. So, I didn’t have much to do with my like, paternal side. I’d look around in school and I’d be like, nobody looks like me. Nobody has the same name as me. Like this is really strange.

So, people who look like me, can see there’s people like them that are thriving, that are leading, and have got quite a successful story.

Chris: ​So successful in fact, that Kyeisha recently won the ‘Mitie Management Apprentice of the Year award’, and, at the time of making this podcast, is up for another industry award. But beyond the personal recognition, both young leaders now support and encourage apprenticeships within their teams.

Kyeisha: ​They’re all doing different ones, so it’s not made my life much easier. We do like, apprenticeship workshops, where they’ll come in, we’ll talk about things. And I think that gives me a lot of job satisfaction in the fact that I want them to be able to feel confident enough to do my job.

Sam: That’s sort of where I see myself, is almost giving them opportunities to make sure they get the learning that they need, and to also develop and make sure they can fulfil their potential.

What they choose as an apprenticeship doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they’re gonna be doing for the rest of their career. That opens other doors, it gives ’em other opportunities. And then especially in a company like Mitie, where there’s so many different avenues you can go down. That’s really how I would sell it. You know, it is just really setting them foundations whilst earning money and giving you qualifications to really advance and progress.

Kyeisha: The future for me, I think I’m gonna keep learning. I would like to be an Operations Director, but there’s a lot of learning yet. For companies like Mitie, I think it’s amazing that they have so many options.

If I decided tomorrow that I would like to be an electrician, there is a course for me that would enable me to do that. For the MOD as well, for our customer, it’s great because there’s always new faces. They get to see people’s journey from start to finish.

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Ian: Ok, so far, we’ve moved from Becca at Boulby Underground Laboratory and heard from Kyeisha and Sam, about three individual career journeys but with a common element – apprenticeship routes to qualification, alongside career progression while they’re working at Mitie with different clients. So what I want to understand now is the bigger picture. What does this mean at scale? How does it represent Mitie’s bigger aspirations and goals, and who ultimately benefits?

Chris: Agreed. So, to help us shift our gaze from the specific to the more general, it’s time to introduce Helen, and the concept of social value.

Helen: I am Helen Longfils and I’m the Group Director of Social Value. My job is to make sure that the work that we do as a business also makes a really positive difference to people’s lives and the communities that we work in.

Social value isn’t just this nice to have, it’s everybody’s responsibility and it is a core part of what business is here to do. Like, businesses can’t exist without society and society is reliant on businesses. So if businesses can step up and play the biggest role that they can in terms of how they employ people and the conditions that those people work in, and how they invest in those people so that they have sustainable and meaningful careers, and that they feel secure in what they’re doing so that they can then give back to their communities.

That is the core part of being a good business for me, delivering on being a force for good.

Chris: Helen’s cross-sector experience gives her an appreciation of the sheer scale of opportunity to deliver social value through Mitie.

Helen: I used to be a consultant to the public sector. I’ve also been a consultant to charities and social enterprises. I’ve always looked at how do I use my skills and how do I look at that biggest systemic piece and help to fix some of those issues that stop people from achieving what they want to achieve and stop people from thriving in the way they wanna thrive.

So this kind of role in Mitie is perfect for me because we literally operate in places across every community in the UK and we employ people to do that. And those people come from all walks of life because we have jobs at every entry level in all kinds of accessible career pathways, some of which are super important for the future of this country. Stuff around green skills or digital skills that we have a lot of jobs that fit into those areas.

Ian: Okay, great. We’ve zoomed right out to social value. Super current given all the discussion of ESG around board room tables, and a growing movement to establish different measures of business performance beyond pure financial shareholder value. But these are also things that I would expect any reasonable, established business to be well on top of. What has Mitie done to stand out from the corporate crowd?

Chris: Good question. I think that would be Plan Thrive, Ian. Drumroll please…

Helen: So, Plan Thrive. It’s our commitment to creating lasting and meaningful social value.

In the next three years, we want to help a million people to thrive through skills or giving them jobs or through supporting them through employability or health and wellbeing, and we want to help a thousand places to succeed.

We count a place as anywhere where we are doing what I call ‘intentional activity’. I.e. we’re doing something deliberately because we want to drive positive change. So, that could be a building that we’re operating, or it could be a public space that we’re looking after or a public space within the community that we are investing in, for example, or doing some volunteering to improve a particular space, it’s all about the ripple effects.

Our own people, we have to start there, because we employ almost 80,000 people. So that’s a brilliant place to start. We’ve got a program called Ready2Work, which is run through our Foundation. So we have the Mitie Foundation and Ready2Work has been running for 13 years since the Foundation started. We’ve delivered over 60 ready to work programs, and we do that in collaboration with referral partners, social enterprises, public sector bodies…

Chris: Ian, before you start peppering me with questions about the Mitie Foundation and Ready2Work, I’ve got one last guest to help answer them…

Sarah: I’m Sarah Kerridge. I work at the Mitie Foundation. I’m one of the program managers.

The Mitie Foundation is the charity of Mitie. We are set up to support candidates who have barriers into employment, as well as supporting our colleagues through volunteering.

It was set up to be the vehicle of social value in the company. I lead on the Ready2Work program. As we know at the minute, if anyone’s trying to apply for a job, it is super competitive. So, how do you make yourself stand out? It is really difficult. And so one way we try and bypass that is through the Ready2Work program.

It is essentially set up to give those candidates who may have been really struggling just to get an interview to not only get the interview but get a chance to get onto the job and show they can do the job.

I always knew that my motivation to work was to help other people. And I didn’t know exactly what I was gonna be. I knew it wasn’t gonna be a doctor or a nurse ’cause I’m very squeamish and so I knew it wasn’t gonna be very hands on like that, but I really had this drive from a very early age to be able to help other people get a chance.

Ian: Sarah certainly sounds like a passionate character! So if the Mitie Foundation has been around, as Helen said, for 13 years, it feels like Plan Thrive is like a rocket to supercharge it?

Chris: Absolutely that. Sarah explained it as a kind of amplifier. And similar to your story about Becca overcoming her social anxiety to grow in confidence, resilience, and then role, Sarah had a similar story for their Ready2Work scheme catalysing future employees.

Sarah: I did meet a candidate on an open day a couple of weeks ago, and she could barely look me in the eye. She was so nervous… she could barely speak.

And then by the end of the pre-placement week, she’s like, I want to be on front of house. That’s where I want to go next. And I was like, fantastic. And she’s talking in front of a room full of other candidates. I was like, it is just fantastic. It’s very, very fulfilling what I do.

Chris: Sarah explained that Ready2Work candidates come from all walks of life, and they’re often people who struggle with normal recruitment processes, for all sorts of reasons.

Sarah: So, we meet candidates who have had to step out of work for various different reasons. It might be ill health, it might be they’ve been caring for a sick family member. I sometimes meet parents who’ve had to step out to care for their young children.

And I say put it as a job description because, you know, if you can manage emotions of a very small child, you can manage most people, right? So, it’s giving that kind of confidence then to say like, what you’ve done is not, not to be disregarded, it’s to be brought in. There are loads of transferable skills.

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Ian: Ok, so I think we’re into summary mode now. We’ve visited a high performing place – Boulby Underground Laboratory – we’ve learnt about Plan Thrive, the Mitie Foundation and the Ready2Work initiative, and along the way we’ve spoken to some genuinely inspiring young leaders and team members, to learn how alternative, less traditional career pathways, coupled with apprenticeships, can unlock qualifications and careers. So, I think it’s time to return to our episode question: ‘how do exceptional people contribute to high-performing places?’ Chris, what do you reckon?

Chris: Well, I think we’ve got the insights now to consider it from both individual and collective perspectives. Now, individually, exceptional people contribute with passion, ambition and commitment to their workplaces, and this seems to establish a culture of support, belonging and, as Mitie like to put it, ‘one team’. Now, collectively, by establishing the groundwork throughout an organisation for enabling these exceptional people to grow and thrive, the contribution is like a virtuous circle, spiralling outwards to benefit communities and society far beyond the actual business itself.

Ian: Nicely done sir.

Chris: Oh, well thank you. But don’t take my word for it – take Helen’s. She sums it up in really simple terms.

Helen: In the core of what you do, you employ people, and you buy stuff. And you provide services to clients. So actually, if you can embed social value in a positive impact for the environment into everything that you do and the choices that you make and who you employ, how you employ them, who you buy from, and whether or not they are also socially responsible and share your values, then you actually stand to make a much bigger difference.

Ian: Thanks for joining us, The Workplace Geeks, on the High-Performing Places Podcast from Mitie. We hope you enjoyed listening as much as we did putting the show together. Don’t forget to subscribe for the other episodes in the series. See you next time.