New Talent Academy for Virgin Trains

27 March 2008

The new Talent Academy for Virgin Trains in Crewe was officially opened by Iain Black, Driver on Wednesday 19 March.

Virgin Trains Director Human Resources, Patrick McGrath said: “We are delighted with our new purpose-built Talent Academy. It supports our vision that we will only succeed by making it possible for our people to develop and use their talents and skills. Visitors to the Academy will see immediately that we live up to our status as an Investor in People by continuing to improve our facilities.”

The Talent Academy is the new home of the Virgin Trains Talent Team, looking after recruitment, training and career development. The team had previously been based at offices on Crewe station.

There is a Recruitment Assessment Suite at the Academy. When new starters join our business they will spend their first few weeks at the Talent Academy. Train Managers spend around 10 weeks before they go out to work on trains.

The Academy will also house most of our Vision workshops - our cultural change programme that we are running throughout the organisation.

We are currently running our Love every second Live! event at the Academy. The aim of this programme is to continue to bring alive our Brand Vision - Love every second - through our people. It looks at how they interact with our customers and each other.

Refresher training such as Safety and Food Hygiene will also be conducted at the Academy.

The new Academy has an Emergency Response suite so that our staff can be skilled up to deal with major incidents. We hope to offer this training package to other Train Operating Companies too.

The Academy will have a small Learning Centre to provide online access for people studying through Learn Direct.

The Academy will be used not only for our frontline people (stations, customer service assistants, train managers), but also to deliver management development programmes for the Virgin Trains management team.

The Academy is expected to deliver 2,300 training days during 2008.

The Academy is in the Crewe Business Park, a 10 minute walk from Crewe railway station. The location was identified with the help of the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and Cheshire County Council's Business Location Service.

Invitation

Members of the media are very welcome to visit the Talent Academy to see the facilities and interview people from Virgin Trains. We can offer complimentary travel on our services to and from Crewe station, which is a 10-minute walk from the Academy.