After reading this week’s case study (pasted below) answer the following questions.
1. Explain your understanding of the following statement and concept “growing their own people.”
2. Identify one challenge that ABC is currently facing.
3. How is training and development promoted and supported in ABC?
4. What methods does ABC employ to get the message across in order to engage as many employees as possible?
5. How are these training interventions supported in ABC?
6. Why do you think is ABC so successful in their training and learning interventions? Or are they successful? Is there any room for improvement?
7. How do training officers contribute to the training and learning intervention in ABC?
8. List the approaches for measuring performance. Should more be used? Why or why not?
9. If you were CEO for a day at ABC what would you do to ensure training was supported?
CASE STUDY
Companies that are serious about getting a return on their investment in learning and development understand that the job isn’t finished until the new knowledge and skills are successfully applied in a way that improves performance. They recognize that getting better at anything requires practice and that when trying anything new, people need support and coaching.
Supporting Training at ABC Organization
ABC Organization is a logistics delivery service, employs over 1500 staff working throughout the nation. The majority of these employees work at one of over 20 major depots as drivers or operational loaders. The delivery and logistics industry is heavily monitored not only to ensure that flow of parcels can be tracked, but also for security reasons. ABC believes in growing their own people and promoting staff from within the company, several depot general managers started out as drivers or indoor sales executives. It is therefore important to ABC that staff have a meaningful career and development path. One of the challenges has been to change the attitude of line managers from ‘my job is getting parcels out’ to ‘my job is to develop my staff to do their jobs better’. As you might expect for an organization employing staff from drivers and loading bay operators to general managers and directors, providing the appropriate training to all is difficult.
ABC is committed to Investors in People (IiP) and has won awards for its training and development. The company firmly believes that individual learning, rather than directive training, is critical to business success. To quote from one of the managers, John Shipit, General Manager, “Training, developing and empowering your people gives you the freedom and the confidence to make changes quickly, affect your business positively and achieve results.” The benefits of this culture can be seen in better delegation, succession planning, and in reducing staff turnover – crucial when there is a national driver shortage. This view is articulated and promoted through the production of a people development charter.
