'Grow your own' pays off at City Airport

For community relations manager Elizabeth Hegarty, who fronts the airport training, it was welcome appreciation for a company-wide effort.

She said: "We were really chuffed as our training programme has been overhauled the last couple of years.

"But it's down to all the workers - we are proud of our team."

Elizabeth joined the airport on the graduate training scheme straight from Queen Mary University.

But since she arrived, the graduate scheme has been absorbed into a staff development programme, which involves taking people from existing roles and giving them coaching from managers to make a step up.

Recent changes have seen an increase in the number of positions of responsibility and staff have benefited.

She said: "In our business we don't have a requirement for a lot of graduates. We've a lot of local people coming in at entry level and moving up the ranks. It's what we call the 'grow your own' system.

"It's hard to find a security duty officer who lives in Silvertown who knows all the ropes, but we can get them in and train them."

One of those who has risen is Redbridge resident Chris Shields who joined London City in 2000 as an operations assistant.

He become a management trainee in January last year and by May was appointed ramp services manager in the baggage area, making him responsible for a team of more than 140 employees.

Another training scheme at the airport is helping employees to an AVTECH 2000 - a City and Guilds qualification in aviation studies, in which 15 employees are taking part.

The airport is also in the Train To Gain government-funded scheme, which is available to all airport workers and provides training and qualification in areas such as IT.

London City Airport Limited has about 425 staff working in areas such as security, operations, baggage, the executive jet staff, corporate team and even airport firefighters.

As well as the often expensive regulatory training - which for a firefighter, for example, costs about £11,000 - the airport last year invested £165,000 in what it calls "soft training" or personal development training.

In these days of high employee turnover in business, is there a risk London City Airport is ultimately preparing staff to leave?

"We're not worried about people leaving," said Elizabeth. "We are like a finishing school. They sometimes move on and often stay in the industry, working for an airline perhaps and we are proud of that.

"But we tend to find they don't want to go - when you invest in people they want to stay."