NEWS EXTRA BMF HIGHLIGHTS HR ISSUES IN NEW FORUM
The Builders Merchants Federation held a HR Forum to highlight some of the initiatives and issues coming up this year. Fiona Russell-Horne eavesdropped on the proceedings.
THE RELAUNCHED BMF
APPRENTICESHIP offer, forthcoming employment legislation, the BMF’s Sector Awareness Campaign, and the latest plans with the BMF were all part of the Builders Merchants Federation’s online HR Forum, held at the beginning of March. BMF CEO John Newcomb took delegates through its latest statistics, highlighting the 950 members, just over 500 of them merchants, along with just over 300 supplier members and 150 service members and associates. “This sector employs just over 200,000 people, and turns over £45bn, so we are a very large chunk of the construction industry,” he said, reminding delegates that construction itself accounts for just over 9% of GDP , making it one of the UK economies key drivers.
Newcomb also outlined the BMF’s Top six initiatives for the coming year. These are: Building Inclusivity, Building Skills, Building Efficiency, Building Sustainability, Building Health & Safety and Building Awareness. 1. The BMF has allied with 16 strategic partners on the Construction Inclusion Coalition, aimed at changing the diversity and inclusion of the construction industry. Newcomb said: “Construction is a traditionally very male dominated industry, but this is about ethnic diversity as well as gender diversity. We are urging companies to get involved and join the Coalition.” 2. Last year the BMF launched the Apprenticeship Pledge, which aims to recruit 15,000 apprentices into the sector by 2030. The Pledge is a written commitment from member organisations to say that they recognise the value of apprentices
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and that they are prepared to make a commitment to take X number of apprentices on over the next few years. 3. Newcomb said: “We are doing a lot of work currently on product standardisation, and collaboration with the rest of the supply chain, with an emphasis on digitisation. This industry is way behind other sectors on this area.”
4.There is a very active Sustainability working group, and the BMF has already launched two reports on the status of sustainability in the sector. 5. A recent initiative with the Lighthouse Club’s Make It Visible campaign offers free of charge assets to BMF members, which includes a video and Newcomb urged all the HR delegates to use the resources as part of their team briefings and internally within their organisations. 6. “We will spend in the region of £250,000 over the next 12 months on the sector awareness campaign. There is a roadmap for the programme, the core objective is that we want to put the building materials sector on the map, we want to position the sector as a vibrant varied place to work, and to create clear pathways to employment, which is where the members’ HR teams will be critically important in this process. We want to build pride in the industry we work in,” Newcomb said. “All of us who currently work in it know how fantastic it is, but maybe externally that message isn’t getting out there.
“We are urging members to nominate someone to be the sector awareness champion, who will drive the campaign through the organisation.”
Stefan Miles from BMF’s Employment Plus service providers
gave an overview of the new pieces of legislation coming into force. These cover: Spent convictions, holiday pay, paternity leave, the definition of disability, which has changed to include the ability to carry out work-based tasks, paternity leave, which can now be taken as two separate blocks of one week, and a new right for carers to take one week’s unpaid leave per year.
From April 6, extended
redundancy protections are coming in. In addition to those employees on maternity leave who are entitled to any suitable alternative roles ahead of any individual not on maternity leave, the legislation will now cover pregnancy and 18 months from the estimated week of childbirth.
It will also include parents using adoption or shared parental leave. Also changing from April are rules around flexible working. There is now a right for all employees from the first day of their employment to make up to two
requests a year for flexible working; employers now have to respond within two months, instead of three. Allied to this is a new right for workers to request more predictable working patterns after 26 weeks’ service. This will impact those on zero-hours, fixed-term contracts (of less than a year) and agency workers.
Miles said that Halborns is currently updating all policy templates to take account of the changes, and that these are available via the BMF’s Employment First offer.
Diane Lucass introduced the BMF’s Sector Awareness campaign, which has its soft launch on April 30th. She urged delegates to get on board by appointing a designated campaign ‘owner’, sending in a series of video-selfies for inclusion on the website, attending the soft launch on April 30th , and using the toolkit to align the business’ HR and marketing channels to the campaign message over the next few months. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net April 2024
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