Today (Thursday 6 February), Marine Harvest (Scotland) Ltd are celebrating their Investors in People accreditation.

At a ceremony at its processing plant in Fort William, Lord Jamie Lindsay, Chairman of Scottish Quality Salmon Scotland, presented Marine Harvest with a plaque in recognition of achieving Investors in People status.  Simultaneous presentations were made at the company's processing plant in Stornoway by Calum Iain MacMillan from Western Isles Enterprise, and at the company's headquarters in Edinburgh by Hans Rissmann, Chairman of Investors in People Scotland.

The Investors in People award recognises the improvements a company has made to meet its employees' development needs and the status was awarded to Marine Harvest in recognition of its efforts to train staff in line with business planning.

Speaking at the ceremony, Dr. Graeme Dear, managing director of Marine Harvest (Scotland) said: "Gaining this award is a fantastic achievement for us, especially taking into account the geographic spread of our business.  It's a great credit to all my colleagues that we have been successful in our efforts, and a tremendous boost during a difficult and challenging time for the industry.

"Our accreditation will demonstrate to our customers and consumers that our high standards of quality reflects not only the excellence of our product, but also the efforts of everyone concerned with production, processing and sales," he added.

Marine Harvest has undergone significant modernisation to its working practices in a bid to remain internationally competitive.  Its £20million investment in production and processing facilities over the last two and a half years has led to a substantial change in working practices, and management realised that their staff's skills needed to evolve in line with the introduction of technology.

The training strategy was wide-ranging, as Iain Campbell, human resources manager at Marine Harvest explains:  "We set out to review the training needs of everyone from fish farmers and processors to senior management.  We needed to ensure they were equipped with the basic skills to carry out their jobs safely and effectively, and also meet their future development needs.  To cater for the needs of the business as it continues to grow, we also developed assessment and development centres to identify and train the managers of tomorrow.

"The journey towards Investors in People status was long and not without challenges, but we were greatly helped during this time from our Investors in People Steering Group, composed of representatives from the various operational area's within Marine Harvest  & from Lochaber Enterprise.  With their help and advice we successfully managed to implement a consistent and thorough approach to training at each of our 60 sites throughout the West Highlands."

Astie Cameron, Investors in People manager for Lochaber Enterprise said:  "The project has been one of the most unique and challenging undertaken by the Network as Marine Harvest covers six of the Local Enterprise Company areas. The commitment made by both the management and staff to implement the strategy and developments identified by the steering group was considerable and ensured that the company achieved the award within the timescale set at the outset."