AC Yule

Recruiting Hungarians and Poles has helped AC Yule fill a critical skills gap and improve output

AC Yule Group is one of the UK's largest independent glass, aluminium and PVCu manufacture supply companies, with a projected turnover of £31m this year and 443 employees.

Based in Aberdeen, the family-owned business operates from six sites throughout the UK - 5 in Scotland and one in North England producing and supplying architectural aluminium, glass and PVCu Windows and Doors to the construction industry.

The workforce includes 87 Hungarians and Poles.With the recent influx of immigrants particularly from Poland into the North-East of Scotland during 2007, many approached the company directly,however the majority of workers were selected via recruitment drives in both Hungary and Poland, by director Owan Taylor.

 The staff are based in the following divisions-

Glass - 19 Poles

Aluminium - 28 Poles and 26 Hungarian

PVCu - 11 Poles and 3 Hungarian

"We had difficulty sourcing suitably skilled labour locally and wanted to find like-for-like personnel that could do the job rather than just bodies to fill numbers," Taylor said.

"We had contacts in Hungary and gave them a very definite brief about what we were looking for. They found a similar business that was downsizing and had people who would be interested in coming over. We sent over a pretty detailed and focused questionnaire to evaluate what knowledge they had, what type of machines they'd operated and what systems they were working on. Then we went over to interview them in their existing workplace to get a feel for the person rather than doing things over the phone."

Six Hungarian Fabricators were originally brought over to Aberdeen in December 2004 and four of these are still with the company, with two of them having relocated their families to Scotland on a permanent basis. 

Taylor said, "As part of their Terms and Conditions all our immigrant workers are obliged to learn English.In July 2007 AC Yule recruited a translator to provide English lessons and a translation service to all divisions within the Company."

Health and safety legislation in the construction industry makes it particularly important that there's an understanding of English within each group of workers.

"AC Yule's international contingent are working in skilled roles including cutting, toughening and processing glass, making double-glazed units, welding, operating machines, fabricating and finishing. The loss of apprenticeships in the UK and fierce competition in the construction industry has made it extremely difficult to source these kind of skills locally."

"The other big positive was being able to bring people in who don't need trained so they could hit the ground running. Their work ethic and work output is excellent. Their time keeping, reliability and low absence rates are very good. Their flexibility is very good because they want to work additional hours for the money. AC Yule do not differentiate on wage levels and reward migrant workers with the same rate of pay. Overall their willingness to get the job done is first class."

Find out more at: www.acyule.com