Alan and the Ingeus JETS program transcript
Andy Pinchers: Groundwork Greater Manchester employs roughly over 100 employees, working out of different offices across Greater Manchester. We do lots of different things, but my team works out in the community of Greater Manchester helping people in fuel poverty with their energy bills, trying to cut costs, and just help people out the best that we can. It is a very niche role, as you can imagine, so recruiting into it can be quite difficult. We've worked with Ingeus loads over the years, mainly going to jobs fairs and helping with getting the energy advice out to the service users. So it was something that came off the back of that. Somebody approached me and said, "We've got this scheme. I've got somebody we think would be really good for it," and it just kind of went from there.
Alan Beal: My name's Alan. My role here at Groundwork is I'm a Green Doctor. I've been in the mechanical engineering trade for most of my life, same place the last 18 years. Through some tragedy in my life, I needed a change, didn't know what to do, so I went on Jobseekers Allowance and after 13 weeks I was told I'm being put on a program called JETS. But after 10 minutes, I felt like I really knew the lady. Stephanie asked me how I was finding work and I said most of it's by emails, but there was an app that I needed to download and I said, "The iPad that I've got is like 10 years old, it won't support the app." She went, "No, it's part of our service. For you to get back into work, if you need the tools, then we can do this for you." And the day after I got a brand-new Android.
Andy Pinchers: I've always been a big believer of these schemes that get people back into work and get people that have the skills, that are been overlooked in other professions, and to give essentially Alan a chance at something that he'd never thought about doing before at all.
Alan Beal: I've never felt for one minute that my age was a problem. I felt part of the family from the moment I sat in with the interview and I still do. And I definitely wouldn't have been here without JETS.
Andy Pinchers: He's fantastic with people when he is out and about and he's a real asset to the team.
Alan Beal: Yeah, I would most definitely recommend it. They've been absolutely brilliant with me, JETS.