Pros
- Westwood accommodation, food and 'lifestyle', even if the budgets are somewhat far less extravagant now senior management have left. - Well equipped Westwood classrooms and facilities to teach Level 2 modules, even if they are mostly irrelevant to the future role in depot, however much Babcock's trainers will try to explain they are not. - The training team within HMS Sultan and at Training Centres (if you get the opportunity to get to them) are excellent. - Excellent pay for first part of the scheme as very little overheads are to be had. - Good annual leave (shame it drops as soon as the scheme ends), volunteering leave and charitable schemes. - Ability to move around various departments to gain additional insight into how your discipline impacts theirs and vice versa. - Generally a very positive, enthusiastic, lively depot environment with lots of hands-on learning. You are in-control of your own destiny and pathway whilst on the scheme. - Good career prospects; such a huge company has a diverse range of jobs, people and disciplines for you to get at. There is something for everyone. - Great safety values, even if a common sense approach would be far better most of the time.
Cons
- HMS Sultan and specifically the food and accommodation is a blemish on the scheme. Outdated facilities, sad looking accommodation, poor training budgets. - Poor pay and overtime terms once the training period within Westwood has lapsed and your overheads return. Bonuses and terms are heavily skewed, unsurprisingly, to those at the top. - Excessive and poorly put together NVQ task books and Knowledge Books, littered with spelling mistakes, grammatical layout errors and repeat questions. Stop being lazy and map the multiple unit requirements against a single question. Totally unprofessional and excessive for the Level 3 qualification. Across the 250+ questions, around half are unique. - Ill-informed throughout the scheme, workloads are suitable for the time allotted, however the sheer quantity of the tasks is not detailed at any point up until year 3. Ideally, this information should be explained prior to job application. - Human Resources will take multiple months to process your new contract on completion of scheme, so do not expect to move into your new role or new pay grade promptly. Backpay is paid, however with the added bonus of greater National Insurance taxation on the lump sum. - Some will not like the shift nor weekend work. - A wasteful organisation, where few care as "it is not my money". This waste is infuriating at times. - Outdated processes and endless re-organisations. This does seem to be slowly improving as we move forward. However most employees are disengaged and disinterested with the new systems such as 'Putting Passengers First' due to the excessive re-organisations in the past and no-doubt in the future.