Matching Talent and Sustainable Careers
Fergus Barry HR Director, Kirby
Working with Kirby Group Engineering has provided me with a fulfilling and exciting career in which I have seen many changes. However, the evolution and growth at Kirby over the past few years has been amazing to witness.
The people who want to work at Kirby, and who we want to recruit, don’t just want a job or a career. They want a future, with a path that leads to a whole range of personal rewards. In order to compete for the high-performance talent out there, my team and I have gone to great lengths to design programmes that will show people Kirby is the place to be, where progression isn’t just an option, it’s expected.
One of these schemes is directed squarely at our high potential recruits. It offers a unique contracted development journey, guided by line managers. Each new colleague is allocated one day per month of structured development, which could be spent in coaching, mentoring, an evening formal education programme, management training, or professional leadership development. Each step is set out in advance and contracted so they can clearly see what they will achieve over the next 24 months, with the full support of their manager as coach and Kirby Talent Development along the way. We also allocate an executive coach to each member of our senior team, to help them reach their full potential and be an integral part of Kirby’s success in the future.
This commitment to the company’s core value of ‘People First’ is illustrated in the makeup of our Senior Management Team, which features many colleagues who have risen through the ranks of the firm. The company’s ongoing investment has provided them with a rewarding career, including opportunities to work on cutting edge projects in industries such as life sciences, renewables and data management. Their achievements in turn have allowed the company to grow and complete its sixth decade in the midst of a strong growth period, led by personnel who know Kirby and our customers inside out.
This company has come a long way from its starting point in the Thomondgate area of Limerick in 1964. As we’ve expanded our footprint internationally, we’ve consciously built a diverse team that draws talent from around the world. We run recruitment roadshows in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Sweden, Turkey and of course South Africa, where we opened our first office outside of Europe in 2023.
We’re proud to count 42 different nationalities among our team and more than 30% of our colleagues were born outside Ireland and the UK.
Taking a role in another country can impose quite a bit of upheaval on someone’s life and those of their families, but we’re committed to the idea of a global, agile workforce. For many of our high value recruits, we’ve sourced the best professional guidance on visa and permit paperwork as well as covering travel costs and providing support for finding suitable accommodation. Our Senior HR Business Partners lead and manage this process. We have also grown a professional in-house Travel and Accommodation Team who manage the movements 24/7 of our international teams.
At Kirby, taking the ‘People First’ approach isn’t only about financial investment, it’s also about encouraging all parties to take the time to learn how each colleague can reach their full potential and ensuring that we are there to support them every step along the way.
It’s now 60 years since Tom and Michael Kirby opened their Limerick business. We’ll be marking that milestone throughout 2024 with a range of company-wide initiatives. It’s important to reflect on the values that have brought us to this point, and also to take the opportunity to recognise the need to maintain and build on those as we look ahead to a very bright future for Kirby.
