Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has introduced twenty four hour production at its plant in Halewood, Liverpool.

This is the first time in fifty years that the car manufacturer has operated twenty four hours a day. The move is a direct response to the rise in popularity of its Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Freelander 2 models.

The Liverpool site has four thousand, five hundred workers who begun the first of their three twenty four hour shifts last week. Land Rover's success had already brought much needed employment to the area. The site has been operating at a twenty year high since a recruitment drive earlier this year when an extra one thousand jobs were advertised. The success of the Evoque model, however, has proved so intense that more employee time is needed to meet the demand. Since the launch of the model just over a year ago, eighty eight thousand of them have been sold in one hundred and seventy countries worldwide.

HR director at Jaguar Land Rover, Des Thurlby, commented that "with 4,500 employees, JLR Halewood has trebled its workforce in just three years – and the size of the workforce is now the highest it has been for 20 years. As well as creating new jobs, our on-going global success means we continue to have a positive economic impact in the north-west and throughout the UK supply chain." In addition to merely providing employment, JLR are also providing their workers with a skill and further opportunities for advancement. The training that new production workers receive is up to one year and leads to an intermediate apprenticeship. This is the equivalent of an NVQ Level 2. This is something that Thurlby has also stressed about the opportunities provided at JLR. This training shows a long term vision rather than merely taking extra workers on for the short term to meet demand. Perhaps it is this attitude towards the training and development of their staff which means that they are so popular with job seekers. Thurlby added, "we received more than thirty thousand applications for the one thousand roles and we are very fortunate that we were able to select such high calibre people for our new jobs."

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