Migrant workers could represent as much as 15% of food manufacturers' total workforce in the industry, according to Improve. Moreover, only a third are unskilled. The remainder are split evenly between semi-skilled and skilled, where most of the full-time shortages will be in the next few years, says the sector skills council.
The organisation also says full-time employees from overseas stay with the same company for an average of seven years, so investing time and money in them pays off.
Immigrants can also be a rich source of part-time and temporary staff. Recruitment agency Right4staff, for example, has just signed a one-year contract to provide frozen own-label ready meal supplier Headland Foods with temporary factory staff and hygiene managers at its Grimsby site. While it only targets UK citizens, many of its temps originate from eastern European countries. "We employ staff from all over," says md Bob Adams. "We've always found them hard working people and they have always complied with our way of working at the factory."
For employers to effectively mine this rich vein of potential, they need to navigate the linguistic and cultural differences they will encounter without breaching employment law. Manufacturers and the Health & Safety Executive produced a document called Working safely in a multicultural food and drink industry, covering the full range of issues bosses were likely to meet.
Edinburgh University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities is currently working with the industry to update this and the Chilled Foods Association is separately producing its own work. Additionally, a group including manufacturer Greencore, legal firm Eversheds and logistics company Wincanton is doing a lot of work on recruiting people from Poland.
Companies initially need to ensure workers have been sourced reputably and are in the country legally. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) exposes illicit employment of overseas personnel, resulting in prison sentences of up to six months and a £5,000 fine per person working illegally. Agencies sourcing immigrant staff for the industry must do so with a GLA licence or face penalties including prison terms of up to 10 years.
Other schemes also exist. Employers can insist recruits sign up to the Home Office's Worker Registration Scheme, which validates employees from the eight EU accession states in eastern Europe. Separately, Improve's Green Card acts as a record and guarantee of workers' qualifications and achievements in the food and drink industry. Companies such as Patak's, The Authentic Food Company, Moy Park and Bakels require all their workers to have the card.
Crucially, if staff are pinpointed as illegal immigrants, the blame can't necessarily be laid upon the agency sourcing them. "Under the Asylum and Immigration Act [1996] the employer has a duty to ensure the employee has a right to work in the UK," says Naeema Choudry, lawyer at law firm Eversheds. "They need to make sure they carry out their own audits. Their response can't be to delegate this to someone else." However, she says they need to take care they are not unfairly discriminating against overseas workers by checking all their workforce.
The challenges don't stop when an employee starts his or her first shift. Overcoming the language barrier is the biggest issue raised by a multi-national workforce and needs careful handling. "They need to provide all assistance possible and look at all alternatives for doing so," says Choudry. "If they are doing that and have a good paper trail, they can avoid a tribunal claim," she says.
Paula Widdowson, Improve commercial director, says: "The two main languages needed are Portuguese and Polish and tests for qualifications have been translated into those languages and can be checked in English.
"The best possible thing is to get the employee up to a workable level of English as soon as possible. That will help them integrate into the community and the workplace."
Improve is trying to incorporate diagnostics to determine levels of English language ability into its section of the National Skills Academy website, launched a month ago. Also, the government subsidises English for Speakers of Other Languages courses and courses to help English supervisors learn, say, Polish.
Agencies and employers can refuse to recruit people without a certain level of English. But they need to beware of stumbling over discrimination laws. "The important thing about discrimination is that your motive is not relevant; it doesn't matter what your intentions are," says Choudry.
The key thing is to treat everyone equally, she says. "If you are not testing the entire workforce, it could be classed as discrimination." Buddy systems and the use of pictorial training all help ensure everyone understands procedures and health and safety rules.
Together with language, cultural issues also demand sensitivity. "Some Muslim ladies will not sit on toilets because of religious purity laws, so they stand on them," says Widdowson. "One company I know kept coming across broken loos and was non-plussed until it realised what was going on. It installed French-style toilets and the problem was solved."
The example illustrates that it's essential to be flexible and to genuinely listen to people's concerns, she says.
Religious issues obviously call for flexibility, says Widdowson, but managers can overreact. "People do have the right to pray, but this can be done during breaks in the morning or the afternoon."
While hard at work, some need to be discouraged from clocking up too much extra time. "Overseas employees are often used to working much longer hours and as an agency we work with our client to make sure all our employees work within the EU Working Time Directive," says Paul Smith, md of Right4staff's northern office. "We have a duty of care to make sure people work within the rules."
Outside the workplace, employers may have to consider the impact that boosting their migrant workforce has on the local community. "Companies have sometimes had to give young males in particular lessons on what is expected of people outside work," says Widdowson. "They found they tended to congregate on street corners and the local community felt threatened. So employers have created things to do, such as barbecues, to solve the problem."
Resources and guidance in this field abound, provided that employers know where to look, and with all the bases covered they can confidently make the most of the overseas talent available.
Small company thinks big about training
Ambient, chilled and cooked meat supplier Southover Food Company is planning to offer food hygiene and hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) training to food and drink companies in the south of England.
The business, based in Southwick, Sussex, was founded in 1989 by husband and wife Steve and Liz Pearce, now co-directors, and employs just 36 staff. It has a turnover of £5M and supplies the catering trade across the UK.
Its ambitions demonstrate that it's not only large firms that have the ability to dedicate resources to branching out into teaching and career development.
Southover Food aims to invest about £5,000 in training facilities, including a training room and projectors, which will also be used by the company to tutor its own staff.
Quality assurance manager Shane Beckford believes opening its resources to fellow businesses in Kent, Sussex and the South West will prove helpful for them as well as a lucrative sideline. "All responsible food suppliers and manufacturers are aware of the importance of food hygiene. There have also been undercover TV programmes addressing the issue."
As a qualified trainer, he will supervise the teaching process. "Students will get a nationally recognised certificate through the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) and we're speaking to our local environmental health officer about this," says Beckford. "We want to be able to organise refresher training for existing employees as well."
As the business develops, the plan is to offer several one day courses in food hygiene, he says. Southover Food intends to employ a variety of materials in the teaching process, from DVDs to traditional whiteboards, in order to boost workers' skills.
Beckford adds that he is considering making the training more interactive by taking students on a tour around the company's operations. "We can show them how traceability works by taking them around our warehouse and we can show them around our production unit to show them how food preparation is done."
Charges for the learning programmes would start at about £50 per person, he says, with Southover Food offering refreshments and all necessary equipment.