FG Wilson
FG Wilson has grown from a small family firm into a large internationally renowned exporter, making generators for domestic homes to those used in power stations.
In 2006, the firm decided that in order to gain a competitive edge through their people, they needed to place more emphasis on developing the knowledge, skills and expertise of their hourly workforce.
FG Wilson’s parent company, Caterpillar deployed a new Caterpillar Production System (CPS). To ensure all their employees were capable to operate the new system, Technical Training Team introduced an accredited ‘Managing Safely’ programme for leaders and also designed a programme to provide operators with a career progression path. FG Wilson also ran two Essential Skills arithmetic classes and three IT classes to help employees with their skills.
To date 56 employees have been assessed with a further 44 waiting to be assessed. After post evaluation, improvements in key indicators such as lost time case frequency, recordable injury frequency, employee engagement and company quality performance.
A highly skilled and educated workforce tends to be a more engaged workforce because people like to do what they are good at doing.