Making a difference through cleaning – the case of Shaun Farrington

In being part of the communities in which we work, we enjoy recruiting locally and providing opportunities for people to develop their skills and build their careers.

In the process of recruiting, we commonly work with a variety of introducers that promote their candidates to us, these include charities and other types of organisations that represent individuals from disadvantaged situations.

Churchill operates one of its main offices in Gateshead, and one of the organisations that we work with in the northeast is Northern Rights, which supports people from the Tyne and Wear districts.

It was through the relationship that we have with Northern Rights that we were introduced to Shaun, who has become one of our longest serving and most popular colleagues in our transport cleaning division, but his journey wasn’t always an easy one.

Meet Shaun Farrington    

In 1995, Shaun’s career had to take second place to a much more pressing and important role. Shaun’s father needed caring for and Shaun stepped in to become his primary carer, a position he occupied for the next fifteen years.

When Shaun’s father died, he had to deal with his grief and then rebuild a life for himself. Having been out of the workplace for so long, the world had changed, and Shaun faced some challenges. IT had certainly moved on massively and Shaun’s computer skills were very out of date.

He needed some help so he approached Northern Rights (NR), a social enterprise that works with disadvantaged people, from a diverse range of backgrounds, who have struggled to find sustainable employment.

The NR team support included wellbeing, CV production, job match assessment and 121 bespoke personal development advisor appointments. Shaun’s qualities shone through, and he was allocated to an employment manager who would help him to find a job.

It was the NR employment manager who introduced Shaun to The Churchill Group. During the interview, Shaun impressed us and showed all the right qualities to fit into our business. After some training, he started on a secondment, progressed to a fixed-term contract, and subsequently became a permanent member of the team. He’s never looked back.

Shaun enjoys his role as an onboard train cleaning operative, he is popular with our client, Nexus, as well as the passengers.

Deborah Smith, Senior Account Manager said: “Shaun’s story is great to share because he has overcome adversity and he has triumphed; he won, we won, Northern Rights has a success story it can use to help others, and even our client is happy because Shaun is a character they know and value.

Skills can be taught and experience can be gained, but the right qualities and attitudes as a person/employee need to be there to make the biggest difference.  To be a good carer, one needs to be diligent, empathetic, hard-working, and always ready with a smile – those qualities are easily transferable to our world.

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