Hartlepool’s Orangebox creates new jobs to help during pandemic

Orangebox CEO Simon Corbett with his team in Hartlepool

Orangebox Training Solutions

An ever-growing North-East based training provider is on course to break the 20-barrier when it comes to creating new jobs during lockdown.
Orangebox Training Solutions, based in Hartlepool’s Queens Meadow Business Park, prides itself on helping people develop new skills and gain employment.
But Orangebox’s expansion means new positions are also opening up in their own offices, with many more set to follow the seven additions to the newly-formed learner engagement team since the first Covid-19 lockdown.
As well as ensuring furloughed staff have all returned to work, a further three appointments will be made on the engagement team to improve quality control; Orangebox’s very own Academy has been launched too.
The Academy aims to coach, train and develop Teessiders to help shape the company’s future, with Chief Executive Officer Simon Corbett happy to hand out ten new apprenticeships if they meet Orangebox’s high standards.
Mr Corbett, who also has plans to bring in a senior leader in the next couple of months, said: “We have just created the Academy, with the idea that we bring people in aged between 16-24 who are currently unemployed.
“Our standards are high, in behaviour, our ethos, everything. We want to bring people in, show them what we are about and see who fits in.
“We will teach them what we do as a business, all of the silos of what we do. They will have opportunities to demonstrate how good they can be in those silos.
“If we have ten who are outstanding in the Academy I will take on all ten. We are looking for outstanding talent. Anyone with that talent has a future at Orangebox.”

Orangebox CEO Simon Corbett

Orangebox has launched a ‘we are here to help’ slogan based on a message that they will guarantee an interview at the end of each training programme in Care, Warehouse and Beauty sectors run in conjunction with local colleges.
That promise is timely given the rise in redundancies and unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic, with roles opening up with Amazon in Darlington and Durham, Tesco, Dunelm, XPO, Hermes and OneBelow, among others, through Orangebox’s partners.
Orangebox has doubled in size since the first lockdown and is looking to see an increase of more than £2m in the funding it receives from colleges and primes.
That is geared towards getting more unemployed people on courses which Orangebox’s expanding learner engagement and team’s will identify.
Mr Corbett, who set up Orangebox nearly five years ago, said: “We want everyone to know we are here to help in this current state the world finds itself in, with the sad stories, social media is a sad place, the negativity. We can help.
“Orangebox and Simon Corbett can’t help get the vaccines, but what we can do is help those who are made redundant, the unemployed. We can help get them back into work.
“We are working in warehouses, care, in other areas too. We are helping to give those people the skills they need to get them into employment through our clients or here at Orangebox.
“We will only put opportunities out there for local people which guarantee an interview with our employers. Those are genuinely large employers, we got 133 people into Amazon in Durham in August last year – in one month! We want to replicate that all around the country.”
Orangebox has trained more than 2000 people since it started through a team of more than 30 trainers.
* For further information on the courses available check out www.orangeboxtraining.com