Stiller Warehousing & Distribution

How Stiller transforms workplace visits into powerful career experiences

Stiller Warehousing & Distribution are a third-generation family business working across the UK, with a large-scale warehousing base in the North East. Stiller’s mission has a focus on customer service, integrity and profitability. Key to that is their desire to ‘recruit, develop and retain the best people’ by creating ‘an environment of learning, aspiration and endeavour’.

Thom Prentice, Business Development Manager and Director for Aycliffe Business Park Community  recognises that as part of this:

“The local schools and colleges are essential – it’s the pool of talent that’s out there”.

 With this in mind, Stiller have engaged with schools and colleges in a variety of ways – including attending careers fairs and even taking a tractor unit to a school. Wanting to build on this, Stiller more recently established and hosted workplace visits in the form of safaris.

These safaris saw local students visit the business park and engage with multiple businesses on site. This proved to be an incredibly effective form of engagement with Thom noting that the businesses gained

“more insight in 45 minutes that we would at any engagement we’ve had in the past”.

Workplace visits like this offer employers the opportunity to give students an overview of your industry and organisation. Doing so can help inspire their future career choices – and may even help you recruit your future staff. Employers hosting workplace visits also helps schools and colleges to meet Gatsby Career Benchmark 6 – “Every learner should have first-hand experiences of workplaces to help their exploration of career opportunities and expand their networks”.

Stiller’s experience highlights how important it is for businesses to have a range of different options to engage with education, to ensure they can access the one(s) that are most effective for their business. For Thom, the Education Landscape Guide and Index can play an important role in supporting employers to do this:

“Not engaging with the pool of talent in the UK doesn’t make any sense. We’ve now got a methodology to follow, so it’s very exciting. We’re not in the dark anymore, we’ve got direction”

“I would advocate this to every business. It gives every business the opportunity to talk to the education industry much better than ever before. You’d be foolish not to look at this”

https://www.gatsbybenchmarks.org.uk/guide-to-gatsby-benchmark-6/