University leavers have voted Severn Trent Water’s graduate programme as one of the best in the country, according to the UK’s largest graduate job review site. The results of TheJobCrowd Top 100 Best Companies for graduates to work for 2015/2016 were announced in London recently.
Thousands of employees in their first three years of employment across hundreds of firms were asked to review and rate their employer on the issues that most affect job satisfaction – including career progression, training, salary and benefits, and what their colleagues were like. Severn Trent’s graduate programme, which attracts more than 1,500 applications each year and offers just 30 places, and gives young people the opportunity to gain experience of working in all areas of a FTSE 100 utility company, came out top.
Liv Garfield, CEO at Severn Trent Water, comments: “This is great news; we’re delighted to see our graduate programme up there with schemes at big companies like John Lewis and Sainsbury’s. It’s important to have an extensive and engaging graduate programme in place, so we can attract a high calibre of young people who we can really shape into our leaders of the future.
“We work closely with all our graduates to help grow their careers. They get the opportunity to develop their skill sets across the whole of our company, from our core business of supplying water and taking the waste water away, and providing our 8 million customers with excellent customer service, through to working in our support services such as HR, Finance and Communications.
“I believe that joining Severn Trent as a graduate is an opportunity to be part of something really special, especially during exciting changes for the water industry with competition for our business customers around the corner. So I’m pleased that the future generation of graduates see Severn Trent as a company they want to work for.”
As well as the opportunity to work in various parts of the business, Severn Trent Water graduates also receive a programme of leadership development training, including Project Management. The company is proud to have a 90 per cent retention rate on the scheme.
Natasha Freeman from TheJobCrowd said she believes the results offer graduates a much clearer picture of which companies really are great employers. She said: “We’ve had thousands of recently graduated employees submit anonymous reviews of what their company is really like to work for in the past year. We are delighted to once again publish our findings and highlight the employers who really do provide their graduate employees with a great experience – not those who just market themselves as doing so.
“The rankings level the playing field so that firms of all sizes, sectors and budgets can be compared fairly. The only thing that really matters is how good an employer they are and, by asking their employees to tell us anonymously, that’s exactly what we’ve found out.”
