Skills for Growth

Mike Mullan is HR Director for Europe at Moy Park, Northern Ireland’s largest business and one of the UK and Europe’s top food companies. He tells agendaNi how important skills development is to Moy Park’s growth strategy.

Moy Park is now a £1.4 billion business employing over 12,000 people at facilities across Northern Ireland, Ireland, England, Holland and France. The company’s growth is very much driven by the great people in the business, therefore supporting our colleagues through learning and development is a top priority. This underpins our culture which is based on fundamental team working, collaboration and interdependency.

To facilitate people development, we work to a leadership development framework – covering performance management, talent development, internal and external learning programmes, graduate intakes and succession planning.

Some examples from our suite of development activities include:

• our award-winning EDGE front line management development programme (with EDGE standing for Empower, Deliver, Grow and Engage);

• our Accelerate future leaders programme which supports emerging leaders and talent development; and

• our leadership pathway for key leadership posts using the leading UK-based training and development centres at Henley and Ashridge as well as the world-renowned INSEAD leadership programme in Paris.

One of the recent initiatives that we are particularly proud of is our Graduate Management Trainee programme and to date we have almost 35 trainee managers working across the company. Each year, we recruit a number of graduates onto the programme who spend time in different areas of the business – from finance to food technology to marketing – to gain a real insight into the company. These graduates are supported by a bespoke management development programme and mentoring from senior management. We are very proud that two former graduate trainees are now executive directors of the company.

For programmes like these to be beneficial, it’s vital that school-leavers and graduates are entering the job market with the skills that businesses are looking for. This includes STEM subjects and, for an international business like Moy Park, language skills. We play an active role in engaging with the business community, government and the education sector to look at the current and future skills needs of the industry.

This includes involvement with organisations such as CBI Northern Ireland’s Employment and Skills Committee (which I chair), the Food and Drink Sector Skills Council in Northern Ireland, the National UK Skills Council for Food and Drink, and the Skills Action Group for the food sector in Northern Ireland. We also participate in the Tasty Careers initiative where members of our team visit schools to talk to students about the wide variety of careers available in the food sector.

At Moy Park, we focus on attitude, interpersonal skills, team working and problem-solving to build successful teams. We provide opportunities for careers in a wide range of disciplines, including finance, marketing, food technology, agriculture, processing, human resources and sales.

Moy Park is a successful business and we recognise that attracting and supporting the best people is central to our growth. Our customers and consumers rightly demand the highest standards from us and it is through our top performing teams that we continue to meet and exceed their expectations.

Moy Park
The Food Park
39 Seagoe Industrial Estate
Craigavon, BT63 5QE
Tel: 028 3835 2233
Email: enquiries@moypark.com
Web: www.moypark.com