Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Engineering a place in the front row

by Personnel Today 26 Feb 2002
by Personnel Today 26 Feb 2002

Ace
– the Athletes Career advice and Education service aims to help ex-sportsmen
and women achieve a fresh goal – establishing a new career. Nadia Damon reports

British
athletes who have spent years concentrating on their sporting goals often find
themselves retired at a relatively early age without any real experience of the
workplace – and consequently very little to offer a prospective employer.

To
address this problem, the British Olympic Association and UK Sports Institute
have set up a joint scheme designed to offer competing and retiring athletes a
career advice and education service (Ace UK) and an employment placing
programme known as Open (Olympic & Paralympic Employment Network).

Rower
John Warnock, 29, a member of the Men’s Lightweight Eight crew is hoping secure
a place in the Lightweight Four crew for the Athens Olympics in 2004. Having
completed a PhD in mechanical engineering at the Imperial College of Science
Technology and Medicine in 1999, he wanted to build a career around his rowing
programme.

Flexible
approach

After
speaking with his allocated Ace UK advisor, Warnock was referred to Open, which
put him in touch with Penspen, a worldwide company that provides engineering
and management services to the oil and gas industry.

Penspen
was looking to employ an engineer and Chris Williams, operations director at
Penspen, had rowed in competitions until the age of 27, and therefore
understood the amount of flexibility a company employing an athlete would need.

After
interviewing Warnock, he decided his qualifications made him ideal for the job
– his PhD was particularly relevant – and Warnock joined the firm in September
2001 and is designing North Sea Oil and Gas pipelines.

His
training schedule allows him to work full-time for six months of the year –
during the winter. After that, his work schedule reduces to three days a week,
and he eventually begins full-time training during the competitive season.

Fitness
for purpose

This
schedule should enable him to maintain the level of fitness needed to compete
in the main regattas and championships.

"The
type of work John is doing means carrying out parts of projects which take from
a few days to a few weeks," says Williams.

"If
he is away for a period then we can just reprogramme work to suit. John’s
training plan is reasonably fixed, but there are bound to be variations and we
can cope with this. His colleagues know that he is paid for the time he works
and appreciate his efforts to fit in as well as he can so there is no problem
there."

Williams
claims an athlete’s attitude to their sport can make them a valuable asset to a
company.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

"I
am firmly of the belief that athletes who compete at this level have to show
real dedication and organisation to be able to succeed. While the athlete is
competing you may have them for less time than other staff, but their other
attributes make them worth employing. Once they have finished competing at an
international level then they will become very valuable employees."

After
his experience with Warnock and the Open scheme, Williams says Penspen would
definitely consider employing more athletes in the future.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Big bank gets bigger despite job cuts
next post
UK metrics will win respect in the boardroom

You may also like

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders receive 400% pay rise

4 Jul 2025

FCA to extend misconduct rules beyond banks

2 Jul 2025

‘Decisive action’ needed to boost workers’ pensions

2 Jul 2025

Business leaders’ drop in confidence impacts headcount

2 Jul 2025

Why we need to rethink soft skills in...

1 Jul 2025

Five misconceptions about hiring refugees

20 Jun 2025

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+