Personalities

You will see in the section on Vision and Values how we think and how we seek to behave. Nowhere is this more important than in the area of our people. We try to manage our people in a way that is both supportive as well as demanding.

Our View on Talent

We want William Jackson Food Group to be known as a business which is passionate about the development of talent and leadership at all levels. We think that the family ownership, heritage and values of the business allied to the fact that we take a long term view make us an attractive alternative for really talented people who want to have the chance to make a difference.

We care about all those who work for us and it is important to us that we have:

• An open and enjoyable place to work in which trust, honesty and integrity prevail
• Strong and effective management teams with a competitive spirit in the market place
• Concentration on the development of all those who work with us and the promotion of leadership and commitment at all levels

Whilst we do, from time to time, recruit new people into the business, we also develop and promote from within and across the group we have lots of examples of individuals who have achieved significant personal and career development with us.

An excellent example is the Sales Director of Jackson’s Bakery, Trevor Maplethorpe. In a 24 year career with us, Trevor has progressed from van sales to sales supervisor and sales manager before becoming a director of the company.

Where possible we try and appoint our own people to managing director level. When we were looking at candidates for the post of Managing Director of Jackson's Bakery recently, we appointed James Watson, who was at the time Corporate Development Director of William Jackson Food Group.

At a senior level we have had attendees at Harvard and Cranfield in the last year, while at a more practical level we run English classes for employees whose command of our language is limited.