Oasis Foods are based in High Wycombe and produce high quality mayonnaise, sauces and dips for many big foodservice companies. They are expanding rapidly and have invested heavily in new machinery and warehouse space over the past 5 years.

Carol Hillaby is BFAWU Project Worker for the South East and supports learning amongst members at Oasis, first visiting the site in summer of 2013 to discuss how the BFAWU could help with upskilling the workforce. Discussions focused around English and maths courses, how they could work, who would help, costs etc.  

Carol met with Mike Wood, who was interim Site Director at the time and is now Group Operations Director.

Carol said:

It went really well as I already knew and had worked with Mike from Hovis in Avonmouth where we’d carried out a similar and successful program of learning. It was agreed that I would arrange for a provider to come to site to complete assessments on the employees."

Carol had been working with the WEA on another site and arranged for local tutors to come in and carry out assessments – these highlighted that low literacy amongst those that attended was the key priority.

With this in mind a 10 week, non-accredited, English course was arranged to gauge interest. It was set up to take different shift patterns into account and was attended by 13 employees in their own time.  

Carol said:

The WEA tutor, Hilary Pugh, was excellent. She tailor-made the courses to fit in with the site, including a session on health and safety as management see this as another key objective."

They followed the initial courses with an accredited course and held a Celebration Day with tea, cakes and speeches to make a big thing of the achievements of staff who had completed.

Over the next year more enrolments, courses, successes and celebration days took place – each one with more learners signing up for various level of English qualifications.

Carol added:

I am really proud of all these achievers, and of the staff who worked so hard. Among those attending, confidence had visibly grown since they had entered the group; they are totally different people now and the company are immensely proud of their achievements."

Ian Wood, current Site Director, said;

The quality and accuracy of our traceability paperwork has greatly improved since we started this training. Traceability exercises now take less time because of the improvement in the guys’ English and writing skills."

BFAWU supported the workers throughout their courses and Carol attended courses personally when possible, helping with lower level learners and leaving Hilary working with the higher level. The union also supplied each learner with note pads and pens which were donated by their solicitors, helped with presentations – Carol even acted as the interlocker for the spoken exams, taking the learner off to a breakaway room and record their discussions.

Carol said that the employer has been extremely supportive, saying:

I cannot fault Oasis Foods; everything I have asked for they have agreed. They openly encourage learning on site and when a course ended they would be asking ‘what next?’ They see the positive outcomes of their team member’s upskilling.

They even agreed to us doing a sound bite for the unionlearn annual conference which had Mike Wood, myself & the BFAWU Full Time Official, Steve Finn talking about the learning. But, most importantly, two of our learners spoke too."

Mike Wood, Group Operations Director for Flagship Europe which owns Oasis Foods, is very forthcoming in his recognition of what has been achieved together.

I’ve worked with the BFAWU team, and Carol in particular, for several years now and the benefits are there for everyone to see. As Oasis continues to invest in new levels of technology, it’s vital that we also invest in training our people to operate in new ways.

Most food companies now employ staff from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures so spoken and written English to an ever-higher level is a key building block in this training.

The BFAWU have been hugely supportive and we can’t thank them enough for what they’ve helped our staff achieve. But, of course, the main thanks must go to the staff themselves – they did all the hard work after all!"

Moving forward Carol and BFAWU Learning Services are looking at bringing Apprenticeships to Oasis and continuing to have a presence supporting learners at the site.