UK supply chains are at risk from what could be ‘the next big skills shortage to watch’ as reported in Raconteur. Europa Road, the European road freight division of Europa Worldwide Group, is tackling this challenge head on – refined its training, promoting from within and committing to boosting the engagement and skillset of its team.
Malcolm Castle, General Manager for Domestic Transport at Europa Road, comments, “Our team are given excellent professional development opportunities, resulting in a record number of highly skilled individuals. The significant changes we’ve made have already resulted in much greater team retention.
“We have upskilled several individuals across our domestic transport team, this includes five class 2 drivers to class 1 entitlement and certified several additional Accord Dangereux Routier (ADR) drivers.”
Europa Road has also refined its staff engagement policies, appointing driver representatives, responsible for delivering feedback from the team in regular one-to-one sessions with senior management.
It’s also been a big year for promotions at Europa Road including Transport Manager Sarah Elliott, Road Domestic Transport Supervisor Cheri Folkes, Fleet Desk Manager Pamela Roberts, and Compliance Clerk and Driver Assessor Paul Gallagher.
Europa Road’s operations team are based at the UK’s largest European groupage hub, in Dartford (Kent) where scheduled, daily, road transport trunking allows customers’ shipments to connect to Europe every day.
As well as having advanced operations, Europa promotes internally and has seen huge progression, particularly amongst its female managers. In an industry where women make up just 20 per cent of the workforce, Europa’s women are providing vital insight into diverse career development opportunities open to all at the company.
Malcolm continued: “Listening and adapting to the changing needs of your employees is vital to retention and is something we do very well. We are constantly developing in-house programs to train our team and we offer flexibility where possible to foster a dynamic working culture. Europa Road goes above and beyond for its team, it’s this that drives innovation in this industry.”
Europa Worldwide Group is an ambitious independent logistics operator with three divisions, Europa Road, Europa Air & Sea, and Europa Warehouse, and has been featured in The Sunday Times Top Track 250 for three years. Europa has invested £5m in its innovative market-leading service, Europa Flow, providing a frictionless flow of goods between the EU and the UK post Brexit. The group employs over 1,400 people with 29 international sites in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Europe, Hong Kong, China and the UAE. The global operator recently reported a record turnover of £302m for the last 12 months, as of August 2022, and remains on track with its ambitious investment programme.
