Training Strategies Cases

Training Strategies for Organisational Impact

Case Book - 2009 -

Training Strategies for Organisational Impact ~ Case Book

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New England Telephone Keeping Track of Training: Quality and Costs Background New England Telephone (NET) has a training department utilising some 300 trainers and offers employees some 1,000 learning courses. It is a company with a multi-million dollar training budget. The company believes in a comprehensive training evaluation program because “the cost of not evaluating training is likely to be more than evaluating”. The focus of evaluation is ensuring that programs are evaluated in a timely way and that deficiencies are fixed. NET has found that the best way to win management support for program development is to show how deficiencies impact on quality and costs directly under each specific manager. The company says it is committed to using the results of its evaluation efforts to improve deliverables in a fast changing technological environment. NET training professionals have not had it easy. During the late 1980s the company shed 37% of its net workforce but added several hundred new technical positions. The training department became leaner at the same time that demands for its services increased. In the last twenty years the company has increased management training by 70% with management development programs now comprising around 20% of all learning programs. It has become increasingly difficult for the training department to offer such a large, diverse and fast changing series of programs with the resources they have so they have had to find some innovative ways to keep ahead of the demands of the business. Using Internal Experts One strategy has been to develop a formal and well organised rotation system across the business. Many businesses use internal subject matter experts but usually on an ad-hoc and ‘immediate needs’ basis. This approach as a number of drawbacks including that it makes the training department appear to be always asking for favours from the business. Also, working on an immediate needs basis can mean that the required experts are not available when most wanted. Logistically and in terms of professional development, using internal experts to assist in training on an ad-hoc and short term basis also delivers poor results. New England Telephone has a rotation system whereby strategic priorities identify and target specific individuals / skill areas to work in training for between 1 and 3year assignments. This allows those individuals to gain real training skills and to have a real stake in quality training and training success. Also, as technology changes, subject matter experts are already onboard and part of the solution. Another innovation at NET training has been to offer training courses on products while still being developed rather than once launched as most companies do. This has helped both the training team and the wider business keep up with rapid technological change. Previously, there was a lag time between when a product was launched and when training was available. Now,


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by the time a product is being marketed, the key business stakeholders already have considerable training behind them. This approach promotes training as up-to-the-minute and even a source of reliable information on emerging products and technologies. Evaluating Training The NET training evaluation process is a program in itself with staff working full time as training evaluators. There are six components to the evaluation process:

� Internal audits that evaluate the company’s six training teams in each district. The six regional training teams are comprehensively evaluated in all areas. The company evaluators have a 250 page evaluation manual to assist them. A full audit of a training team takes three months but results in rich and far-reaching information on everything that is happening. There are 21 data collection techniques that measure 40 training variables. The team being audited is an active participant in the process and they have some say in what the audit does.

� Stakeholder satisfaction focused on evaluating line manager satisfaction and perception of training their staff have attended. The methods used are quick surveys and focus groups.

� Detailed course evaluation questionnaires sent to managers and staff three months after staff completed a training course. These questionnaires aim to identify the practical, applied value of training back on the job.

� In-depth studies which evaluate a particular program’s financial impact on the business. These are conducted sparingly as they are costly, but when they have been used they have been very useful. A very simple course “Listening Techniques” was found to be very effective when first run. It was felt that the course should be rolled out across the business. A financial impact study later revealed that the course had greatly increased the efficiency of telephone operators; making them far more productive in dealing with customer calls. The study revealed an annual saving to Motorola of US$2.28 million because of this course.

� Evaluation of outside vendors. More external vendors have been used since the downsizing of the training team. Internal guidelines on assessing the quality of vendors have been developed and no program is taken up without a pilot being run first. An internal trainer always observes the pilot and canvasses learner feedback to identify the value of a course. Based on the feedback, the vendor is required to make any changes Motorola desires before the course is run again.


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Motorola Keeping Competitive through Training Motorola is a leading manufacturer of electronic equipment, components and systems based near Chicago, USA. The company measures sales in the $billions and net profits in hundreds of millions. The company has numerous manufacturing plants across the US and overseas and well over 100,000 employees. Motorola has enjoyed many years of 20% annual growth and is one of the most successful companies in its field. Motorola’s success is attributed to two things: management stability and refusal to diversify away from its core business. Management stability has been advanced through descendents of the original founders still leading the company and the innovative Motorola Training and Education Centre (MTEC). The MTEC was founded not merely as a training centre, but with the specific objective of maintaining Motorola’s competitiveness. MTEC curriculum is about skill development. Curriculum is developed by listening to the business, understanding what is going on and supporting real needs. When the Centre was opened skilled trainers were brought in from outside and a select group of veteran Motorola people were up-skilled to train. The MTEC philosophy is to “improve the corporation’s productivity, performance and profitability by developing work skills that support the company’s strategic objectives.” Critically, MTEC runs ‘performance-based training’ which means that all programs must have a measurable effect on the company’s bottom line and this must be measured. Motorola conducts audits on its training. In terms of one key strategic objective – product quality – the returns are ‘several times’ the investment. Motorola is serious about MTEC; 2% of company payroll is allocated directly to staff training – that is tens of millions of dollars. Training Criteria

� All training must be job related � All training must be applicable throughout the company. Job-specific training is managed

by the plants where it takes place. � All training must clearly support the strategic goals of the company � All training is a dual investment; training people adds value to the business. Training that

does not add value to the business does not happen. Motorola sees its people as company assets. The company believes in investing in assets for the company’s benefit. People are seen as a key ‘renewable asset’ which means more investment grows the value of people. Participative Management Program Motorola also runs a Participative Management Program. Motorola does not just seek employee participation in corporate decision making; it expects it and new employees are told this when hired. New employees are given a 12 hour induction on how they can participate in corporate decision making mechanisms. The approach itself is known as the Participative Management


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Program (PMP). The basic unit of the PMP is a work team of between six and twelve employees. The work unit influences employee performance goals and performance evaluation. The idea at Motorola is that the employee knows their job best; therefore grouping colleagues into work teams that intuitively know ‘the best way’ and then empowering them to make decisions makes good business sense. Employees, through their work teams, contribute to decisions including how they achieve the production targets set by management. In fact, the work teams can largely decide how best to do their work to reach targets – as long as they get the results. PMPs meet weekly to discuss their tactics to meet their targets and surpass them. The incentive to surpass profit targets is that any profit a work team achieves above the target is split between the work team and the company. There is a sliding scale which means that employees can get up to 40% of all profit above the set target. The philosophy of the PMP cleverly promotes the effectiveness of MTEC. This is because employees who have a real incentive to beat targets will value and seek out any additional skill-based training on offer. MTEC is enthusiastically and proactively supported because it is seen as the vehicle towards beating profit targets.


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Gilroy Foods Employee Opportunity through Technical Training Gilroy Foods relies heavily on technical employees’ skill, adaptability and knowledge in a fast-changing and increasingly automated environment. To keep the best technical people and to develop technical competencies in staff, the company designed a new Technical Training Curricula (TTC) and aligned it with career progression. The idea was that progression through training would coincide with career progression and increased pay. Pay increases would be covered by the additional responsibilities and technical expertise of staff as well as a reduction in staff turnover costs through increased retention rates. The TCC had a number of important features:

� Career progression was automatic on completion of necessary competencies for the next career step. This approach provided incentive; clear link between effort and reward; fairness as people advanced on merit not on any subjective / supervisory decisions; equality as all technical employees irrespective of employment conditions could participate.

� Technical employees themselves had considerable input into the design of the TCC to foster a sense of ownership over the initiative

� A careful and thorough analysis of business needs was undertaken so that the TCC was aligned to the development of sufficient people in each skill area.

Advancement from one position to another was based upon 4 criteria:

1. Satisfactory completion of the training modules for advancement. 2. Minimum time in grade to ensure proper experience and exposure to a full range of job

scenarios. 3. Demonstration of ‘real-time competence’ by applying the new competencies on the job

under observation. 4. A satisfactory performance appraisal that includes indicators such as attendance, safety

and other broader performance criteria.


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General Electric Continuous Learning in Fast Changing Environments GE has always faced the challenge of ensuring highly skilled technical employees continually develop their skills and knowledge to remain relevant. This is especially true in the company’s Aerospace Electronic Systems Department (AESD) where newly recruited engineers’ professional knowledge is obsolete within five years. To solve this problem GE created the Continuing Engineering Education Program (CEEP). This Program is controlled by a committee of engineers and managers who understand the issues best. They make sure that curriculum is continually evolving and meeting the needs of the business. Significantly, the committee also has marketing representatives on it as they are listening to customer needs that engineers must translate into solutions. All CEEP courses are directly linked to performance appraisal and career development. CEEP CEEP offers about 35 courses per quarter and they are open to all employees within the given department – not just engineers. Generally, about half the participants are from engineering. Courses are conducted outside of regular working hours (usually immediately after work) and on the employees’ own time. Employees must have motivation to use their own time and complete whatever preparation is required. About 1,800 people per year take a course and 75% of those complete the course. CEEP programs are thoroughly evaluated by participants, especially for relevancy to the job. Because courses usually only run once or twice before they need to be changed anyway, it is easy to act on participant feedback. Questionnaires are also sent to people who did not complete courses to discover why. Again, the committee is keen to know whether job relevancy is a reason for people dropping out.


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General Foods Total Ownership Approach to Training GF has an innovative approach and philosophy to company training. They believe that training is not merely the role of the training department – it is everybody’s role. Also, training successes and failures do not lie at the feet of the trainers – they are shared by everybody. In fact, GF does not have a centralized training department or training director. Line managers and employees play a big role in training at GF by helping in the planning, design and implementation of learning. In many companies this may happen but it is ad-hoc and unnoticed. At GF everybody knows that everybody should be involved. Innovations

� Company Training Network (CTN). This has been established as a loose and informal – yet supported and encouraged – learning network whereby good training ideas are shared across GF plants in the US and Canada.

� The Hourly Training Program in which employees, managers and technical experts work as a team to design and deliver the training they need.

� Annual Technology Roundtables for manufacturing managers to exchange ideas and set future agendas on a needs basis.

Training is a joint responsibility between the personnel (HR) manager and line managers at each GF plant. Line managers are responsible for getting employees involved and the personnel manager oversees training project design, development and implementation. Line managers and selected technical experts are actively involved in designing and implementing training, providing data for evaluation and sometimes as instructors. The company’s Organizational Development (OD) team provides consultancy, resources and advice to the plants to support their training efforts. OD guides the direction of training efforts to ensure they are aligned with business strategy. The OD team also manages and delivers the company’s large management development suite of programs.


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Pacific Bell Telephone Retraining Workers for New Jobs In the volatile and fast changing telecommunications industry workforce planning is tough. Downsizing the workforce is very expensive when, a few years later, you need to re-hire people. Downsizing also affects morale, reputation and business continuity. At Pacific Bell they have a history of preferring to retrain workers as the industry evolves rather than lay people off and hire new skills. Some important elements of their retraining approach include:

� Work in partnership with the union at all stages so that retraining is jointly sponsored by the union and the company.

� Contract local colleges to design and deliver instruction for retraining � Work with state government programs that support retraining. In California the

Employment Training Panel helps companies retrain workers with financial assistance to companies.

� Work with employees to recognise impending change so that retraining can be gradual skill development rather than sudden and dramatic change.

� Enter into 3 year agreements with employees that guarantee employment for the term of the contract as long as the employee accepts retraining support when their existing position becomes obsolete.

� Retraining under the contract includes more than retraining for a specific job. It includes generic skill development to give the company and employee greater scope for internal placement. It includes assistance to relocate to another area within the company network. It also includes career guidance, job fairs and counseling.

The training efforts to try and retain people fall into two categories: training to prevent possible lay-offs and job specific training to fit people into defined new roles. Training to prevent possible layoffs has been designed to cover a range of generic, yet market-competitive, skills and knowledge. Training in computing skills, electronics, mathematics and technical skills ensure retraining develops the individual to be multi-useful. This training also helps people uncover new passions and lets them try out skills to see what jobs they may best like before placement. This helps the company to retain people they retrain long enough to get a return on that investment. There have been many cases of ex telephone operators becoming highly skilled technicians.


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General Motors Hi-tech Training Working with vendors on your terms General Motors, and other operators of hi-tech equipment, have an ongoing challenge to get equipment vendors to work with them to give employees timely, quality and company-specific training on equipment. After many years of struggling and re-working their model, GM came up with a winning solution. GM has designed comprehensive guidelines for their equipment vendors on staff training rather than leave this matter to the vendor’s idea of what is best. GM insists that its equipment vendors give equal weight to technical training requirements and all other aspects of their equipment sales. Their guidelines go further to state “The plant operators must become self-sufficient in all phases of operation, troubleshooting, maintenance, repair and modification of equipment / systems being installed.” The Engineering Services Department at the GM Linden plant has led the way with equipment vendor training. The department decided to assemble and train a crack corps of highly able internal specialists to learn everything about the new equipment and then train the rest of the staff. This corps would also become the ‘trouble shooting’ hotline for workers post installation. The corps was selected on other criteria in addition to technical expertise. They had to be enthusiastic volunteers, they had to be well regarded by their peers and they had to have specific expertise one key area. The corps was then sent out to the relevant equipment vendors where they were trained on the soon-to-be installed equipment. GM made significant demands on the vendors training offering proper train-the-trainer training. In numerous cases the vendors had to design or re-design training to meet GM demands. Vendors were required to prepare and supply the corps with tailored equipment manuals and other resources so that the corps could then design training modules for workers back at GM. These materials were used to train and support hundreds of GM workers. Solving problems GM’s new and proactive approach to ensuring workforce competence on hi-tech equipment solved a number of long-standing problems:

� The creation of highly able in-house experts ensured all workers had immediate assistance when they needed it; something the vendors could not supply. This saved considerable down-time, frustration and productivity interruption which saved a lot of money.

� Initial vendor training for all employees immediately following installation is very expensive – this was a huge saving.

� No call outs to vendors saved on call out fees and made the company more self sufficient and confident with the equipment.


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� Training for workers was able to be scheduled in sync with company production schedules and in time lots suited to the company – not possible when relying on the vendor to train.

� Instructors could pace the training to suit individuals and groups, they could use appropriate examples and contextualize the training as well as incorporate existing work problems in the learning.

� In house instructors are available for extra help, face-to-face follow ups and additional training at little notice without cost to the company.

� Learners felt comfortable and confident being taught by people they have existing relationships with.


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Goodyear Building a Training Commitment Goodyear says that at its company “training is seen as an investment, not a expense.” Such sentiments are popular in modern business but Goodyear has gone much further than the cliché, they have adopted principles that the business adheres to.

� Training is an integral part of managing; it is not optional and not a separate activity. Managers must consider training as part of their decision-making processes.

� Training must be designed to give Goodyear a multi-skilled workforce for competitive edge and high productivity.

� Training must be objective-based and must deliver practical skills that people will use in work. It is not enough to just attend classes; people must demonstrate competence.

� Training must become self-sustaining. That means trainees become trainers to help develop others in their newly acquired skills.


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IBM Achieving Cost Savings and Quality through Training IBM spends around US$1 billion per year educating its employees. It employs around 4,000 people full-time in education and training services and delivers 5,000,000 training days around the world each year. More impressive than these figures is the achievement of the training function to be reducing costs without sacrificing quality. The overall strategy is known as the Systems Approach but it actually encompasses a range of training innovations. Most important is that IBM does not evaluate the cost effectiveness of training at the end of the training as others do, but at several critical stages during the process. By managing costs as the training process unfolds, there can be no bad surprises at the end. Another difference, historically, between IBM and other companies is that training has never been sacrificed during tough times. IBM has always known that you never cut training during hard times; you have to keep developing people to develop the business. IBM delivers high quality education programs through the philosophy that “every 15 minutes of training must be outstanding”. What this means is close attention to instructional design – to the detail in every program. There should not be a 15 minute block in any program that is not great. IBM seeks out excellent instructional designers – many companies just hire ‘trainers’ who both facilitate and design but IBM has long recognised the two different skill sets. The systems approach to training – including measuring and evaluating throughout the process – has also helped reduce costs as waste can be more readily identified at each stage of the training process. IBM has also managed to reduce costs by pursuing technological advances in training delivery. The company always considers a wide range of delivery options and assesses each to see which will deliver the best results for the lowest cost. Interestingly, IBM got rid of almost all traditional classroom training 20 years ago when everybody else was almost entirely relying on classroom training. This dramatically reduced costs then and the mind-set has carried over to today. In fact, IBM calculates classroom training to cost between three and six times that of self-guided study. IBM, as an example of alternative training, is well recognised as a leading user of Communities of Practice as a learning and development strategy. CoPs, however, are still either unknown or in infancy at most other companies. Curriculum design IBM aims for every job in the business to have a matching curriculum that clearly spells out a career ladder through training and development. Each position has at least 4 stages and each stage spells out the training required for competence at that stage. The stages are:

1. Entry (orientation) 2. Job competence (first stage training) 3. Advanced training to move from competent to proficiency 4. High level training (expert) and readiness for promotion


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Travenol Laboratories Reducing Maintenance Costs through Training Maintaining machinery in manufacturing environments is expensive – up to 40% of the cost of goods manufactured. Travenol Laboratories have found a unique way to reduce maintenance costs through focusing on supervisor training. The Travenol approach has three special characteristics:

� The cost reduction strategy focuses not on machinery itself but fist and second level supervisors

� The program seeks to expand the ‘financial vocabulary’ of maintenance people so that they can better communicate with production people in financial terms and solve cost-related problems.

� The program uses participative management and employee empowerment techniques in its design and delivery.

Travenol maintenance costs had been rising steadily over a number of years. This led to a reorganization of the maintenance department which did have some success. However, it was apparent that maintenance supervisors were struggling to be as effective as hoped. Travenol used a consultant to identify the issues. The crux of the problem appeared to be training related:

� Maintenance supervisors were mostly ex-technicians yet they were now in jobs that demanded considerable management, interpersonal and business skills – skills they had not had access to. It had been assumed that technical knowledge was enough. However, maintenance supervisors needed to be able to speak the language of production to work cooperatively on maintenance solutions. This meant having fair financial skills.

It was decided that the answer to reducing maintenance costs lay with better skilling the two tiers of maintenance supervisors. Firstly, a committee was established to identify, guide and action all training for maintenance supervisors. The committee immediately commissioned a needs analysis for maintenance supervisors. Secondly, supervisor training would now be structured and focused on developing real skills and career opportunities. One of the great successes of the strategy was the highly inclusive and empowering methodology adopted. Supervisors were fully involved in the project. They led the identification of training needs and approved the programs offered. They helped select appropriate learning exercises and projects to reinforce the training. To further transfer ‘ownership’ of the initiative to supervisors, the experienced supervisors were also involved in facilitating some training sessions, supervisors got to name all of the programs, supervisors recommended necessary changes to each program after the pilot had been run. Much of the training was not classroom training. Maintenance supervisors are hands-on people; ex-technicians so it was decided to use ‘situated’ learning activities wherever possible. This meant training occurred on the job and within the context of the job. Supervisors practiced what they were learning as they worked. There was also a range of on and off the job projects which were self-directed.


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Xerox Critical Skills Training Program The Critical Skills Program at Xerox has been an important re-training strategy to help the company keep people but move them from obsolete or surplus jobs to new and emerging jobs. Xerox is in an industry that has changed dramatically and rapidly over the past twenty-five years – it wanted to find away to keep great people but not the old jobs they have been doing. The CST is a one year program which Xerox runs with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York. The program has proved successful where individuals are committed to the program and it is cost-effective in comparison with retrenchment ad rehiring. RIT was chosen because they have a specialized team that partners with private enterprise to design and deliver leading-edge technological training. They had worked with Xerox before so the alliance was a natural fit. Making the CST happen

1. A joint taskforce was established between RIT and Xerox to analyse the company’s skill needs, emerging trends in their industry and obsolete or fading skill sets within the business. In other words; what skills are needed and what skills are no longer needed.

2. A list of critical skills was drawn up which program participants would need to have mastered to complete the program.

3. The CST was promoted as only a ‘first step’ program; the foundation on which employees could build a new career. This built excitement as the program was seen as a new door into a world of fresh opportunities.

4. A curriculum was designed around the identified skills. The curriculum included 17 courses with 16 hours learning per quarter. 12 of the courses were tailored to Xerox’s specific needs and organizational set-up and 5 were generic courses. To add importance to the CST program, all courses were held at the RIT campus. Only people on the CST could attend the courses.

5. All people on the CST receive full pay and benefits while completing the program, laptops and time to work from home.

6. Tutors were assigned to help learners with study and counseling was provided to help those struggling to balance the study, stress of career change and family life.

7. The CST did not enlist people, it sought volunteers. This was to get people on board who really wanted to retrain, could commit to the demands of the program and were willing to develop new careers with the company. Applicants were put through a rigorous selection process which included interview and questionnaire.

To increase the completion rate of the CST, the taskforce examined a range of data on those who completed and those who did not. As they discovered the determinants of success (family support, individual flexibility, quality of support given to participants etc) they focused on building these. Results


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1. Reentry into the organisation in a new role has been successful for both Xerox and the individual. Satisfaction with the training offered under the CST has been high and proven practically useful. Questionnaires have reported good news and retention rates have also been good.

2. The program has built useful networks in Xerox of ex-CST participants from across the business. There has been greater cross-divisional cooperation and camaraderie.

3. The program has been highly cost effective. The costs of turnover of skilled people and associated rehiring and retraining costs far outweigh re-skilling incumbent employees.


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Hewlett Packard Women @ HP Mentoring Program Hewlett Packard found that it had many very talented women but very few achieving senior management positions. This is not unusual in most businesses, but it is especially true in the IT industry. To try and change this trend, the company decided to introduce a mentoring program especially for high potential women. It was decided that traditional training approaches had not served women well and that a new direction was needed.

HP had two main objectives:

• To develop high potential women within HP • To attract more women into their workforce.

HP was committed to providing mentors for these women but had previously used internal mentoring programs which hadn't been successful. They decided to bring mature and experienced external mentors to provide support and guidance and act as role models for the high potential women. All mentors were women and were accredited by an external mentoring consultancy.

"By enlisting highly skilled external mentors to take part in the program, we are able to overcome the lack of (female) role models within our industry, while providing a stable and continuing mentoring environment".

John Hannelly - Human Resource Director Hewlett Packard

Women@HP is a 12 month program. Participants meet with their mentors for 2 hours per month at a venue and time agreed between them.

The Executive Team nominated women managers on the basis of career potential and commitment. Those selected attended an induction session to prepare them to take full advantage of the program and the external consultancy professionally matched each manager with a mentor.

In addition to the mentoring, broad leadership development is addressed through a 360 degree feedback process.

Evaluation is an important part of the success of the initiative. At 3 and 12 months, on-line surveys are completed by both mentor and mentees and group evaluation sessions are held at 6 and 12 months.

The 12 month evaluation highlighted how much the mentees identified positive changes in their behaviour and their attitudes - changes they attributed directly to the mentoring program.

Reported changes included increases in confidence, self-esteem and a capacity to better manage their own careers. The mentees reported improvements in their existing skills and


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in the way they did their job. They'd taken on more responsibility within their current role and overall gained a broader perspective on leadership.

Quantitative data from the formal evaluations as well as comments from the participants, the Human Resources Director and the CEO illustrate the success of this program.

As both a diversity and retention strategy, HP has found the mentoring program to be a great success. As stated by one of the mentees:

"I do not think I would still be here at HP had I not had access to my mentor. She was an invaluable resource and sounding board for me".

The mentoring program at HP and has had such positive results that the business units are now funding the program themselves.

Bakers Delight Partnerships for training Overview Bakers Delight is an international franchise company of more than 700 retail bakeries in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. A small percentage of the bakeries are company owned and run but the vast majority (90%) are owned and operated by franchisees. Some franchisees have two or three bakeries. Training has always been a challenge. Firstly there is the need to attain high levels of consistency in service, product, cleanliness and operations across the stores. Secondly there is a delicate balance between the responsibility of the franchisee to provide and encourage their staff to train against the responsibility of Bakers Delight (the company) to design and offer timely, relevant and geographically accessible programs. The third challenge is the cost to the franchisee of sending staff to training, especially when they are undertaking a four year apprenticeship in the city and must travel often. Bakers Delight found an innovative way to address all three problems with one initiative. Partnerships for training Bakers Delight decided that to address the challenges it needed to radically change the way it had been working with the technical colleges that deliver baking apprenticeship training for all baking institutions. The technical colleges (TAFE) had a very traditional and un-business like approach to dealing with training and the companies that sent trainees. The curriculum was rigid in content and delivery; communication back to employers was poor; techniques and machinery we outmoded and there was no flexibility. Bakers Delight franchisees were asking why they should bother sending bakers to get an apprenticeship; why not just train in-house and save the considerable expense and frustration? After all, training in-store meant that the bakers would learn on the right equipment, the right way. However, Bakers Delight prided itself on developing people and offering real training with recognised qualifications. Allowing young people to be sponsored to get a lifetime trade qualification went to the heart of the company’s integrity.


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Having identified the concerns of franchisees, Bakers Delight negotiated a special business partnership with the leading Sydney TAFE. The arrangement saw the TAFE teachers trained on Bakers Delight recipes, operations, machinery and processes. Then TAFE received new equipment from Bakers Delight which replicated the inside of their retail bakeries. This machinery, along with new Bakers Delight recipes was used to train the Bakers Delight apprentices. The apprenticeship curricula was tailored by TAFE and Bakers Delight to teach Bakers Delight specific knowledge and skills instead of the old, generic and outmoded curricula that had been used. Now, the Bakers Delight apprentices had an apprenticeship that mirrored the businesses they worked in – they were learning what they needed but still satisfied the requirements for the apprenticeship certification. The franchisees were very happy. In a radical departure from long-standing tradition, Bakers Delight also worked with TAFE teachers to reduce the hours young apprentices had to attend TAFE classes. This was important to franchisees who could not afford to have key personnel away from their businesses for any length of time. TAFE trainers and Bakers Delight trainers looked at the curriculum and identified opportunities for TAFE classroom training to be completed in-store instead under proper supervision. They instigated a support system whereby TAFE would now travel to the bakeries and conduct apprentice assessments, conduct some training and discuss progress. Now, real work-based assignments in store replaced TAFE lecturers and instruction. Also, franchisees were now far more involved in their staff training and able to deal directly with TAFE when their trainers visited the stores. The apprenticeship was shortened and became competency based rather than time based. A final innovation was distance learning through the use of CDs and email which bakers could use on their home PCs at their own pace. Some results

� More franchisees began to send staff to TAFE to get apprenticeships than ever before. This meant more young people getting thorough and accredited training with a trade qualification.

� Younger apprentices and others who could not do the old apprenticeship training because of the distance from home to the TAFE (often hundreds of kilometers) were now able to take up the training.

� Franchisees were able to attract and retain key staff by offering the apprenticeship which before was offered less and not enthusiastically supported.

� Franchisees saved a great deal of money and had their key personnel spending much more time in the bakeries.

� Training was now far more adaptable to change. When Bakers Delight developed a new recipe, changed a baking process or modified equipment, it could immediately be introduced to trainees through the apprenticeship training. TAFE just adopted the changes.

� Bakers Delight has strengthened both its reputation and working relationship with its franchisees. The company has increased its bench strength with far more people in the system getting excellent training n the ‘Bakers Delight way’. That means greater group consistency and quality.

� TAFE developed its reputation as a partner with business instead of an out-of-date, inflexible provider of ‘old training’.

� A second Bakers Delight TAFE training centre has been successfully established in Newcastle, Australia.

Training Strategies Cases

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