A 65-year-old Cheadle man is urging older people looking for work that it is never too late to start a new career! After five years of retirement, Tom Emmens landed a job with the national energy supplier npower and has now been working at their Victoria Road office in Stoke on Trent for the past two years.

Tom, a retired BT Training Design Tutor, decided to return to work to boost his retirement fund and initially had some difficulty finding a local employer to see past the age barrier. After a temporary job at Alton Towers gave him some customer service experience, he applied to npower, and was offered a position as a Customer Administrator, within the Billing Department.

Tom said:

"It’s interesting, interactive, stimulating and challenging with a friendly and co-operative atmosphere."

npower welcomes applications from older workers and wants to promote the benefits of employing older workers to other local businesses.

Eryl Jenkins-Shaw, human resources advisor for npower in Stoke on Trent, said:

"There are real business benefits to employing a diverse workforce, including improved retention rates, reduced recruitment and absenteeism costs, and often, improved morale and productivity.

Older people often have a wealth of transferable skills and experience that is valuable to our operation – this is more important to us than the age of our candidates."

Stoke on Trent Jobcentre Plus office is working in partnership with npower to support the recruitment of up to 100 staff over the next six months at their administration centre. There are a variety of full and part time permanent posts on offer, including administrators, payment processors and customer service operators.

Applicants must possess good communication and keyboard skills, and demonstrate commitment to delivering exceptional service to their customers. The starting salary is £11,185 increasing to £11,716, plus the opportunity to earn up to £1,000 bonus per annum (pro rata for part time employees), as well as other employee benefits.

For further details about the npower vacancies call Jobseeker Direct to access the thousands of jobs on offer locally, nationally and internationally on local rate telephone number 0845 6060234. The textphone number if you are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech difficulties is 0845 6055255. Lines are open from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm on Saturdays or you can visit the Jobsearch area on this website.