EASTERN European truck drivers working in Swindon are being offered an incentive to call friends and family back home to fill a skilled recruitment shortage in the town.

For the past few years Mainline Employment, in commercial Road, has struggled to fill vacancies for Class A HGV drivers.

Despite recruitment campaigns, both locally and nationally and offering incentives to employees to recommend a friend or family member, filling the positions has become increasingly difficult.

In order to meet the demands for lorry drivers Mainline has widened its net, encouraging drivers from their books to contact their friends and families in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania to phone home and recommend the jobs for a cash reward.

“We offer incentives to all our staff to be fair,” said Debbie Jamieson, who runs the Swindon branch.

“We don’t just recruit drivers, we also recruit for permanent roles, call centre roles, industrial roles, everything. But it’s mainly the skilled workers which we’ve been struggling to recruit.

“Everyone who joins we offer a £100 incentive if they recommend a friend and they work with us for four weeks.

“But numbers of HGV driver have been dwindling over the years for various reasons. It costs £2,000 outlay to get a licence and the training and even after that they struggle to get jobs because they are newly qualified drivers and don't have any experience.”

As the pool began to dry up in the UK, Mainline widened the net, opening up opportunities to workers from abroad.

As well as work, Mainline promises to help workers from overseas find accommodation and settle into the UK, with orientation courses and settlement support.

“We also offer it throughout the UK, and it used to be we’d have drivers from Scotland and Cornwall and Wales come to work in Swindon and we’d find them accommodation and help them settle in, but even that has dried up,” said Debbie.

“In places like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland the standard of living is far lower and wages are lower, and they can come over here to work.

"Even though the cost of living is quite high the people who come to work are men, and they are here to make as much money as possible to support their families. It also means they are quite flexible and want to work as many hours as they can, which is something many people here don’t want to do.”

Now Mainline is offering added incentives to those drivers who encourage more workers to come to Swindon.

Debbie said: “As numbers dwindled we needed to use a bit of ingenuity, so we asked our workers to help us do our jobs by using their contacts in these countries to help fill these positions.

“They receive an added monetary incentive for that too.”

Clair Prosser, the policy executive with the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce , welcomed Mainline’s ingenuity while reinforcing the the ideal of recruiting British workers for British jobs.

She said: “Overall in the Thames Valley, our members are recruiting the people they need successfully, particularly in the technology and professional services sectors.

“While we would encourage British firms to hire British workers, in some sectors it may be necessary to recruit from overseas. It is also important that employers work with education providers to develop training for the relevant workplace.”