Digging Deeper to find you work

Welcome to Issue Number 4 of our Ward Personnel candidate newsletter.
We hope that you find the content useful and interesting. We would love to hear your feedback, including any suggestions for topics to cover in future editions of this newsletter. Also, feel free to send in an article that you would like us to publish – we would be happy to consider any submitted articles from candidates for our next edition.

Ward Worker of the Month Scheme

Our monthly awards program is continuing to be very popular with our workforce and we are delighted to support it every month. Our clients also really like it as it gives recognition to a worker who has genuinely contributed to the success of our clients' projects and has gone the “extra mile” as regards their work ethic and positive contribution to the work site. Please see below the details of our winners for July and August being presented with their prizes.

July 2022: Waldemar Krupa was our Worker of the Month for July. Waldemar has been working with our highly valued client, Dornan Engineering, at their Intel project site. Waldemar’s work ethic, flexibility, and tremendous attention to detail makes him a worthy winner and Ward Personnel are delighted to be able to recognise his great work. See below picture with Alexandra Polkovnikova, Ward Personnel Account Manager, and Kieran Hayes, Safety Officer for Dornan’s Engineering, along with Waldemar receiving his award.

August 2022: David Kokoa was our Worker of the Month for August, and deservedly so. David has been with working with our highly valued client KPH across multiple sites in the Cork region since May 2021. David’s dedication to his work, reliability, and tremendous attitude makes him a worthy winner and Ward Personnel are delighted to be able to recognise his great work. See below photo of David being presented with his €200 One4All voucher by Ward Personnel’s Cork Office Manager Anthony Hurley, and Aaron O’Sullivan of KPH on site in Shanakiel, Cork City, along with David receiving his award.

Summer Raffle Results

We are delighted to announce below the winners of the 2022 free Summer draw for our workforce:

First prize: €200 One4All voucher to Bartlomiej Bysko, Cygnum site in Macroom, Co.Cork. See below photo with Anna Truszynska, Account Manager with Ward Personnel, presenting the first prize to a delighted Bartlomiej at Cygnum site in Macroom, Co.Cork.
Second prize: €100 One4All voucher to John McLellan, BAM site at Carrigaline Ring Road, Cork City.
Third, fourth and fifth prizes: €50 One4All vouchers to Liam Looney, Suir Engineering site in Ballycarney, Co.Dublin, Norman Dalton, Cumnor site at Waterford train station, and Ihor Shepel, Rockwell Engineering site in Ringaskiddy, Co.Cork.

Congratulations to all the prize winners and we look forward to our next raffle which will be at Christmas.

Ward Personnel supporting DIY SOS project in Mitchelstown to help house Ukrainian refugees

The staff and workers at Ward Personnel had already run a fundraising campaign in March that raised over €5K for the UNICEF Ukraine appeal but when we heard about this project, we wanted to support it in any way we could. David Ward commented “We felt that it was a great project and given that we had a new Ukrainian staff member, Alexandra Polkovnikova on our recruitment team, and that we had a number of Ukrainian construction workers on our site teams it was an ideal project for us to get involved in and support”.

The team at Ward Personnel were thrilled to help with the labour requirements for this project in Mitchelstown in July where the DIY SOS team took on the mammoth task of renovating 6 houses that were donated by The Church of Ireland to support the housing needs for Ukrainian refugees.

Overall, we supplied 7 workers to the project at no cost, which was a combination of our site workers and our own recruitment staff. Oleksandr Kulyk, originally from Ukraine, and Arunas Rulevicius gave tremendous commitment over the course of the 10-day project and did sterling work on the grounds and internal renovations. Over the course of the project Oleksandr was in touch with his family back in Ukraine and it was a proud and emotional moment for him when the project was completed. Special word of thanks to our client, Cahalane Brothers Limited, for releasing Oleksandr to work on this project with us.

Also, thanks very much to our team of 3 carpenters who saved the day by joining the team at short notice at the latter end of the project to help get it over the line. See the below photo of the lads, Patrick O’Connell, Daniel Falvey and Conor McCarthy with Baz Ashmawy on location at the site during the works.

Our own staff members, Peter Abernethy and Rory Dean, swapped their phones and laptops for hard hats and hammers to lend a hand over the weekend on their days off – their hard work was greatly appreciated even if the message was to stick to the day job lads! – Fair play to them for giving up their time to help with this great cause.

See below photo of Peter Abernethy with Bishop Paul Colton (who was instrumental in making the houses available for this project). Also in the photograph are James Harrington from Ward Personnel and Oleksandr Kulyk from Ukraine.

A final word of thanks to the crew at the DIY SOS team – Sinead, Siv and Sophie were a pleasure to deal with and made the whole experience an incredibly positive one to be involved in for all at Ward Personnel.

Overall, we were delighted to be able to support this project and we hope that the houses will have a lasting legacy to support those from Ukraine needing housing due to war circumstances that have devasted their normal day to day lives.

My six month student placement at Ward Personnel –
some highlights from Alexandra Nasca

Alexandra finished her 6 month student placement with the Ward Personnel Cork office at the end of August. Alexandra was a breath of fresh air with her positive attitude, tremendous enthusiasm, and constant flow of new ideas for the recruitment team at Ward. She has very kindly offered to give us a few minutes of her time on Video chatting about her experience at Ward Personnel and the experience she gained during her placement – worth a listen we feel. We wish Alexandra the very best of luck as the returns to her Business Studies course at MTU in Cork. Maybe she will come back to us some day in the future!

Our Candidate Referral Scheme
We launched this scheme back in May 2021 and it has proved very popular with our workers. The concept is very simple – if you refer a candidate to us then once the candidate works a minimum of 20 days for us, we will give you an additional €100 in your weekly pay cheque.
For full details of the scheme click here.

Best in Ireland Awards
We are delighted to have been listed as the best Construction agency website in Ireland in the most recent “Best in Ireland” publication listings.
We have invested a lot of time and effort in developing our website and in building the Ward Personnel brand and reputation with both our workers and our clients so this recognition from an external body is great to see.

Upcoming Ward Personnel Charity event for the Lighthouse Club – watch this space!

There is no doubt that the work that the Lighthouse Club charity do on an ongoing basis to support construction workers and their families, who need help and advice, is invaluable. In particular, their support services around mental health are excellent and very importantly they are all free. Please see contacts details below for their Irish support services and we would encourage anybody needing a bit of help to contact them on a confidential basis.

Call: 1800 939 122
Text: 50808

Ward Personnel are a proud supporter and sponsor of the Lighthouse club in Ireland, and we are planning to run a fun charity event in early 2023 with all proceeds going to support the Lighthouse charity activities in Ireland. We have assembled a project team to plan and run this event and we will be eager to engage with our site workforce and our clients to get everyone involved and to make it a big success.

We will be in further contact soon with all the details and plans for the event – so watch this space!