OPENREACH TO CREATE NEW JOBS IN SCOTLAND

Openreach is aiming to create and fill around 500 more Scottish jobs during 2022. This includes around 390 apprenticeships.

The new recruits will be based across Scotland – including around 65 posts each in Fife and across Ayrshire, 55 each in Edinburgh and Glasgow, 40 each for Angus, Dundee and Highlands and Islands, and 30 each for Stirling and Scottish Borders – working to build and connect customers to the company’s Full Fibre broadband network.

This is on track to reach 25 million UK homes and businesses by December 2026 and has already reached more than half a million properties in Scotland. The hiring spree – 4,000 new jobs are being created across the UK – is part of the largest recruitment drive in Openreach’s history.

With a workforce of 3,700 across Scotland, Openreach already employs the nation’s largest team of telecoms engineers and professionals and has committed to building a more diverse and inclusive team in an industry that’s traditionally been very white and male dominated.

Last year, 17% of the company’s intake of trainee engineers in Scotland was female; more than triple the previous year. This was partly due to employing language experts to transform its job adverts and descriptions, making them gender neutral.

Chief executive Clive Selley said: “Openreach is a people business first and foremost, so I’m proud that we’re continuing to invest heavily in our people, having hired and trained more than 8,000 new engineers over the last two years, over 800 of them across Scotland.

We want to reflect the communities we serve and give opportunities to people from all backgrounds, so I’m encouraged that we’ve recruited more women and minority groups this year compared to last year, but we’ve got much more to do in an industry that hasn’t been very diverse historically.”

Alongside its recruitment drive, Openreach has committed to represent ONS measured levels of ethnic diversity across the UK and is aiming for at least 20% of its trainee engineer recruits to be women this year, with half of its external hires into management to be women by 2025.

Openreach also plans to retrain more than 3,000 of its existing engineers during the next year – changing their focus from fixing older, copper-based technologies to installing and maintaining faster, more reliable fibre connections.

The new trainee apprenticeship roles come with a starting salary of £21,845 and recruits can be earning up to £28,353 following 12 months of specialist training to achieve an NVQ level 2/SCQF Level 5 in one of Openreach’s training centres.

Its national training centre in Livingston expects to deliver 11,000 training days during the 2022/23 financial year.