Local People and Skills (11)

Local people and skills strategy

Our local people and skills strategy aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals 3, 4 and 5.

Goal 3 - Good health and well-being – ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4 - Quality Education – ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5 - Gender Equality – achieving gender equality and empower all women and girls

Recruitment

At Sunbelt Rentals we employ over 3,700 people across the UK, the vast majority of whom live in the local communities surrounding their depots or offices.

Our people journey begins with our recruitment process.  We are an equal opportunities employer, offering opportunities to all.  Our careers website handles our recruitment procedures and allows us to collect socio-economic statistics.  We believe that our diversity statistics are representative of the communities in which we work, and are currently attracting applications from all sectors of society.

We also work with several social enterprises to help encourage applications from certain groups of people or geographic areas. An example of this is our partnership with All Together Cumbria. 

Apprentices

At Sunbelt Rentals we spend £2.5m pa on our award-winning apprenticeship scheme. We currently have around 120 local apprentices working across the UK in a variety of operational and support roles:

  • Plant maintenance
  • Electro-technical
  • Fitter
  • Service technician
  • PEO
  • Accommodation maintenance
  • Mechanical engineering
  • Business administration
  • Hire desk
  • Payroll and finance

Our apprenticeship team starts to take applications for most schemes in spring each year, and recruit for our hire desk apprenticeship all year round.  You can register your interest through our recruitment portal and we will send you a message when we start to recruit by clicking here.

Training

Our in-house training team offers the opportunity for self-development and career progression at every step of your Sunbelt journey. From an initial induction through to a blend of classroom, onsite training and e-learning our people have the ability to take control over their own learning. Our in-house Training and Talent and Development teams will ensure that you are fully supported as your career progresses.

Ethical Employment – The Living Wage

Sunbelt Rentals was proud to be the first rental company in the UK to voluntarily pay our people the Real Living Wage.

 

 

The 5% Club

Sunbelt Rentals is a member of The 5% Club – creating a shared prosperity across the UK by driving ‘earn and learn’ skills training opportunities. We commit that 5% of our workforce will be earning whilst they are learning.

 

 

Skills and Careers Partnerships

All Together Cumbria is an innovative social enterprise working in partnership with industry and the community, to provide people in Cumbria with greater opportunity and access to employment. It aims to help reduce the skills gaps that exist within Cumbria today and potentially in the future. Sunbelt Rentals is proud to be the first business partner within the rental sector, collaborating on providing employment opportunities from our depot locations at Whitehaven, Egremont, Carlisle and Penrith.

All Together Cumbria Manager Sarah MacGregor said, “Working with Sunbelt Rentals is a pleasure. They are always welcoming, ready to listen and prepared to collaborate with us. We are delighted that they have committed to supporting and using our services. They understand our drive to provide a more effective and efficient approach towards providing greater training opportunities through improved skills development and training.”

Southwark Construction Skills Centre

“Thank you to Sunbelt and Hilti for an outstanding day - our apprentices learned so much! It is so important to reinforce the message about ‘safety first’ – hearing hints and tips first-hand from the experts and being able to ‘have a go’ is invaluable. Our students all learnt how to get the best out of their equipment which will help them work more efficiently and safely on site!” John White MBE, Operations Director, The Skills Centre Limited.

 

Wellacre Academy Careers Day

Sunbelt Rentals was pleased to support 137 year 10s from Wellacre Academy in Trafford at their careers day with advice about pathways into the construction industry, as well as practice interview sessions. We were thrilled that two of the boys emailed to find out more about gaining a place on our apprenticeship scheme before the afternoon had finished. One told us, “I enjoyed it because I learnt some of the questions that I would be asked and how to answer them well.”

 

Case studies