This section reviews our activities to support our Now or Never ambition to support more than 1,000 people into good careers by 2030.
Supporting people into good careers is one of the ambitions of our Now or Never strategy. Our aim is to have a deeper, more meaningful impact on the people we connect with. Our careers target focuses on helping people furthest from employment and who face barriers to work to develop good careers, in our business, in our supply chain and in wider industry.
In 2024, we supported 64 people into sustainable employment, five of those directly with Willmott Dixon.
Over 3,000 people took part in our social value programmes. 92% of whom stated had a high impact on their lives.
Details of some of our social value activities and their impact are detailed below.
Building Lives Academies
Our Building Lives Academies give participants the opportunity to learn construction skills and gain hands-on work experience, as well as support with CV writing, job hunting and interview practice to help them find work.
The Building Lives Academy framework allows us to have a standard approach that we can flex to suit different demographics and locations depending on the needs of the community we are working in.
At our Stockport Interchange project, we delivered four Building Lives Academies designed to help remove barriers to employment for local people. Focused on inclusivity, this initiative resulted in transformational outcomes for seven individuals: four care leavers, one veteran and one long-term unemployed candidate secured sustainable employment and a student with special educational needs went on to secure an internship placement with our customer.
Nick Hill, Economy, Work & Skills Manager at Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, said: “Willmott Dixon’s social value outcomes give a real-life example of how to work with local partners to provide a routeway into a construction career for target priority groups."
Supporting the Long Term Unemployed
As a signatory of the Social Mobility Pledge upskilling and reskilling local people to improve their social mobility is key to the positive lasting legacy we want to leave for the communities around our projects.
At the Kingshurst Village Centre regeneration project in Solihull, where we are delivering 25 new net zero, social rented homes, we have offered employment opportunities and construction training to local people.
Working closely with Solihull Council, we worked with 29 participants across seven cohorts with nine individuals successfully gaining employment, 16 participants achieved their CSCS card, and 23 attendees completed Level 1 Health & Safety training.
One Solihull resident who has already benefited from the Construction Training Hub is Nathan Williams from Smith’s Wood. Having completed the groundwork course and gained his CSCS card, Nathan has already secured a job with the training provider RMF and will be helping to pass on his newfound skills and knowledge to future cohorts.
“The skills and experience I have gained from the Kinghurst Construction Training Hub has been the foot in the door I needed into the construction industry," said Nathan.
Kingshurst resident Neil Hakesley (below) had been unemployed for a month after being made redundant. He was initially taken on as a labourer on site in 2023, but his enthusiasm was soon rewarded as Willmott Dixon paid for him to gain his Articulated Dump Truck licence through RMF Training Group in 2024.
“I was so humbled when Willmott Dixon approached me and said they wanted to pay for my licence as part of their social value investment, I can’t tell you what this means to me and my young family,” said Neil.
We always look spend as much of the project’s budget locally as possible, and at Kingshurst 48% of labour was provided by people living within 10 miles of the site.
At our Lawrence Weston Housing Project, in Bristol, our programmes resulted in eight work placements, 26 jobs created and 347 training weeks on site.
Working in support of the customer, Bristol City Council’s ambitions for the project, we worked with The Restore Trust and Acorn Recruitment to support local people into employment.
Connie Jones had faced a challenging period of unemployment lasting six months before the Restore Trust supported her CSCS qualification and Acorn Recruitment got her on boarded in her first job in construction at Lawrence Weston.
Connie said: “I never could have imagined getting into construction because of the perception of a very male dominated industry.
“It was daunting at first, but after starting on site I’m focused on progressing my career, hopefully getting qualified in a specific area down the line and learning more and more every day.”
Supporting prison communities
We continued our commitment to drylining academies in prisons in 2024, looking to offer prisoners a pathway to meaningful employment and help address the construction industry’s skills shortage.
Our academies upskill prisoners to NVQ Level 2, with Willmott Dixon and drylining partners providing technical support and materials as well as offering advice and employment opportunities to help them into work when they leave custody. We launched our fourth Drylining Academy at HMP Lincoln in 2023, having already seen successful programmes established at HMP Elmley, HMP Belmarsh and HMP Cardiff.
In 2024, we worked in partnership with Groundwork on the GMCA Bootcamp and Green Start programmes at HMP Forest Bank. Together, we developed a programme that supports people in custody through practical workshops. The project gives the prisoners an insight into careers in construction.
Supporting young people
We will also work with schools and colleges, providing practical STEM programmes, provide mentoring, apprenticeships, T Level placements and work experience.
In 2024, 8,730 people attended our workshops, we offered 516 weeks of work experience and delivered 461 mock interviews to boost employability for people living in the communities where we work.
Working with schools and colleges to attract the next generation
Willmott Dixon is the country’s leading builder of schools and colleges having delivered 30,000 new school places in the past five years alone. We work with educators to deliver classroom teaching and training, raising the profile of construction careers.
At our Hitchin office, we host an annual career challenge for young people, this year 30 students from schools across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire took part in activities to build the skills for their future careers (below).
At Westminster Academy, we also delivered a Design, Collaborate, Build Challenge with 200 Year 8 students. This supported our work with Westminster City Council where we are delivering the Westmead development, a scheme of 112 affordable homes in Harrow Road and Paddington.
Our Interiors team held a week of STEM sessions with year 10 students at Grace Academy in Birmingham for National Apprenticeship Week, featuring guest speakers from Willmott Dixon’s management trainee programme.
Members of our Sustainability Team delivered a day of teaching and activities to students at Pix Brook Academy, built by Willmott Dixon in 2020. They took over the entire year 8 timetable for a day focused on the themes of our Now or Never sustainability strategy, including designing a sustainable school, the environmental challenges of construction and how to run a social business.
Our team in Wales has been delivering STEM workshops and careers events around our Abergavenny Police Station project, including a warm welcome at Llanfoist School (below), built by Willmott Dixon back in 2008.
T Levels
Industry engagement is crucial to effective delivery of T Levels, and we take pride in offering placements to help students gain practical experience of careers in the construction industry.
As part of our Manchester College Phase 2 project, our team has been supporting T Level students, giving them first-hand experience.
Design, Surveying and Planning T Level student, Molly (right), said: "I'm very fortunate to have a team like this that includes me in their work, which will help me decide what I want to do after I complete my T Level course.”
In recognition of our support for T Level students, Willmott Dixon's social value team in the North of England was awarded 'Industry Placement Partner of the Year' by Trafford and Stockport College Group' (below).
Willmott Dixon received the award for our commitment to providing hands-on experience to full-time learners, reinforcing their academic knowledge and helping them develop a deeper understanding of how their skills can be transferred to the practical working environment.
Supporting women into construction
As part of our commitment to uplift and upskill local communities, we champion the role of women in construction.
In 2024, women made up 46.8% of the UK’s available workforce and 14% of the UK construction workforce. At Willmott Dixon, Women made up 32.8% of our workforce and 45% of new hires across the business at the end of 2024. You can find out more about how we attract, retain, develop and promote women working for Willmott Dixon in the ‘Our People’ section.
We work to empower women in the communities around our projects, supporting them to explore careers in the construction sector.
Our Manchester team hosted a ‘world of work’ day for female students at Manchester Academy in Hulme (below) to encourage aspirations and build confidence delivered by a team of 12 professional women from Willmott Dixon, We Are Footprint and supply chain partner Dalkia.
Supporting people with disabilities
As a disability confident employer, we support people with disabilities to overcome barriers to employment and tackle workforce inequality.
In 2024, we continued our support for Woodlands SEN School in Luton, which we have worked with alongside while completing our Millfield Green project in Caddington.
Over a five-week period, our people challenged year 12 and 13 students to design and build an eco-village, teaching them about roles in construction and developing key skills (below).
At Baytree SEND school for pupils with severe and profound physical and mental learning difficulties in Weston-Super-Mare, we ran a series of sensory workshops (right) to enable the students to experience the construction of their new school campus by bringing the sights, sounds and feel of the build right into their classroom.
Our activities to support neurodiverse young people with industry work experience were recognised by one of the UK’s largest providers of education and care for young people with special educational needs in 2024.
Witherslack Group, which operates 35 SEN schools nationally for children and young people aged from four to 19, presented Willmott Dixon’s social value team in the North with a Future Employers Award in collaboration with the ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity (below). Over the past year, we have supported the wider Yorkshire community, organising site visits and workshops that offered employability skills, careers training and mentoring for 134 students.
Supporting our Armed Forces
In 2024, we continued to demonstrate our commitment to being an armed forces-friendly company as part of the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS). Five years after being awarded silver level for the Armed Forces Covenant, we have strengthened our armed forces pledge with the intention of achieving the gold standard in 2025.
We regularly attend insight and career events with BuildForce and the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) and offer work experience and mentoring to support the transition of people from armed services to civilian life.
As an armed forces friendly company, we have introduced policies such as increasing our commitment to additional annual paid leave for reservists of 10 days.
Our Armed Forces Affinity Group raises awareness of issues relevant to the armed forces family and has supported new starters from a military background, several of whom have successfully joined Willmott Dixon.
Our project teams are also demonstrating this commitment on site, with great examples of support seen on our Royal Military Academy Sandhurst project, and currently at Kendrew Barracks, including career transition support initiatives and work experience.