By Ross Hunter

Great leaders need to be resilient and creative. If Jennifer Phin was a stick of rock, those would be the two words etched into her core.

Since 2015, when Jennifer took over as Managing Director of Glasgow-based construction company A.C. Whyte, she’s faced the challenges of Brexit and Covid. Both she and her company have not just survived, but thrived, leaving a legacy of community integration in their wake.

Brexodus led breakthrough

The Brexit vote created a huge headache for Jennifer, whose company relied on teams of European workers to install A.C. Whyte’s energy-efficient wall-insulation systems. When she saw an exodus of her workforce back to Hungary and Romania, she realised their employment model wasn’t sustainable.

Jennifer needed to employ more local people and build a more stable model that allowed the business to grow. But although unemployment levels in the west of Scotland were high, A.C. Whyte couldn’t find enough people with the specific skills they needed.

So Jennifer had to get creative. She approached West College Scotland, with the support of the Energy Skills Partnership, to design a tailored training programme – the Skills Academy. The one-year programme models the technical, practical and behavioural skills needed to become an A.C. Whyte operative. Jennifer describes how it went that first year:

“It was a great success. Of the 11 people that completed the course, seven of them did so to a high enough level to be offered a guaranteed job with us.”

Jennifer is rightly proud of their brainchild. But the Skills Academy doesn’t just give A.C. Whyte a pipeline of new talent to help the business grow. It has a positive impact on the community. 

A.C. Whyte’s model matches up a local economic ambition (like energy efficient homes) with a social need (training and jobs). It joins up local government, private business, the training and education sector and the local community. People are living, training and working all in the same neighbourhood, creating a virtuous circle for the whole community.

Jennifer says, “The Skills Academy is a great model for wider social and economic issues in Scotland. And A.C. Whyte is at the heart of that innovation.”

Empowering teams that rise to the challenge

The success of the Skills Academy is of course down to the work of the team around Jennifer. Her leadership style had to evolve as the business has grown. Jennifer explains:

“I had to become better at delegating and empowering the people around me. So, I created a senior leadership team to allow us to adapt for the future, setting clear goals and expectations.

“It was uncomfortable to start with, but I knew we had to do it. I trusted my team and allowed them to make decisions – and mistakes that they could learn from.”

That trust was repaid when the Covid pandemic forced A.C. Whyte to mothball its construction sites and furlough over 100 operatives. Everyone rose to the challenge and gave Jennifer the confidence that her team could indeed step up when they needed to.

“It’s one of my proudest moments thinking about what the pandemic revealed in the nature of my team. Health and safety led the way and helped the contracts team and operatives to close down sites safely. And our marketing team did a great job in not just protecting our brand reputation but actually enhancing it by communicating really well with our customers.”

Jennifer is a great example of a leader who has risen to a challenge that threatened the stability of her business. She has empowered her team and driven the creative solutions that looked after the needs of her company but also the needs of the communities they serve. That’s a legacy to be proud of.

If you’d like to hear more about Jennifer’s story or A.C. Whyte’s Skills Academy, you can read more on their website. And if you’d like to understand more about developing your leadership skills, please email me to set up a meeting.

 

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