Formica Group Future

Charities

Working with charities is important to us as well as our employees. We recently held a UK companywide employee led vote to decide which charities we would like to support throughout the year. Getting our employees involved in who we support is important as we wanted to choose the charities that were meaningful and we will continue to get this feedback. We currently support:

• Tiny Lives
• Macmillan Cancer Trust
• Sir Bobby Robson Foundation
• Parkinson’s UK

If you want to get involved we have a wide range of activities that you can take part in, recent examples include the Great North Run, a charity zip line from the top of the Tyne Bridge and a 40km cycle ride. From these events we have raised over £8,000 in two years.

Education

We love working with schools and Universities in our local area. We want young people to know about what roles might be out there they haven’t even heard about and also learn from our employees and the amazing and different career journeys they have been on. Our employees help at a range of events at schools and we also invite students to come and visit us so they can gain an insight into the realities of our plant and headquarters.

We are also part of the Local Enterprise Advisers, this is a nationwide initiative to officially partner schools with businesses to bridge the gap between business and education, ensuring schools and colleges provide the best possible careers advice. Formica are proud to partner with Monkseaton High as their Enterprise Advisor.

Inclusivity

We want to challenge ourselves around diversity and inclusivity. One way we do this is by working with local charities who can help us. This year we therefore started to collaborate with the Newcastle United Foundation whose programmes work to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into work. We have also had a longstanding relationship with Percy Hedley Foundation and its students and we are currently involved in employability workshops and disability awareness in a bid to become a Disability Confident Employer.

Apprentices

We recently launched our apprenticeship programme and started it by recruited 5 apprentices into our Engineering team and Fabrication Support Unit. We plan to continue this programme and recruit more apprentices.

Youth programme

Establishing opportunities for young people is genuinely at the heart of a lot of our future Formica plans. We are therefore launching work experience for young people via our partnership school Monkseaton High School as well as with the Newcastle University.