We are pleased to announce that on 17th August we were awarded a Princess Royal Training Award 2021 for our Graduate Development Programme (GDP). Our third Royal award in the last two years! 

This award is in recognition of our commitment to the professional development and training of young engineers. Since its launch, the Graduate Development Programme has led to a yearly average revenue growth of 23% and a 16% decrease in staff turnover whilst expanding the skill sets of our graduates and enabling them to excel at their chosen specialism within 3P.

With the awards being supported by their President and President of The City & Guilds of London Institute, HRH Princess Royal, this is a widely recognised and prestigious award which reflects on achievements that come from training and development.

The GDP was designed over a 2-year period following the lifecycle of a 3P engineer. The highly tailored scheme is competence-based and evolves to both the business’ needs and graduates’ expectations. This uniquely self-led scheme is managed by the participants and supported by senior management acting as mentors.

Created to tackle a skill shortage, the GDP helps to recruit and retain graduate engineers by allowing them to expand their skill sets and develop as professionals at 3P. It offers the opportunity for newly-qualified engineers to be the driving force behind their own personal development accelerating the development of skills within the business as well as supporting our business growth strategy.

As a highly technical engineering business, working in a niche market, we soon recognised the significant technical skills gap that has been ongoing for several decades. Therefore, we have embedded training within our culture with the aim to provide the company with well-rounded engineers, enhancing employee satisfaction and motivation as well as supporting our business growth.

Since we have a very wide and varied need for technical skill and knowledge, the scheme has been developed to ensure all our graduates get exposed to as many aspects of the business as possible. We believe that learning on-the-job is a more efficient and effective way of training, as the graduates can build on strong practical and theoretical skills specific to 3P's needs. Additionally, the scheme has been configured to be inclusive, enabling participants to manage their own training at their own pace.

Founder and Director of Projects at 3P, Dr. David Seaward shares his thoughts on why 3P created the programme and how it fits into the strategic vision of the company: ‘The GDP addresses skills issues which hampered growth. This initiative has been pivotal to our recent growth and we have seen a wide range of benefits. We have tangibly reduced staff turnover and recruitment costs. Staff satisfaction and improved morale are also very apparent as evidenced in our recent satisfaction survey, along with the desire to carry on working at 3P into the future. We have also seen rapid promotion of our graduate engineers as a further impact of the scheme. This enabled the Senior Management team to focus on other areas to further grow the business organically’.

This award follows on from 3P innovation’s previous two Royal awards; a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation awarded in 2020 and a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade awarded earlier on this year.