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Business Drivers

Job roles within the organisation are predominantly manual with customs clearance processing requiring some IT skills. Applicants are assessed on individual merit rather than qualifications, with ongoing training provided in-house.

Concerns over the ability to attract, retain and train employees prompted the Senior Management Team to explore ways of improving performance. Initial discussions with staff at all levels identified problems with literacy and numeracy as a significant issue.

Implementation

To address the skills issues, the company introduced an innovative Skills for Life programme. The literacy and numeracy requirements of all job roles were closely analysed and mapped to the relevant areas of the adult education curriculum. This provided an extremely accurate picture of the precise skills required for each role and enabled bespoke training plans to be developed for each employee.

The company’s internal communications were also subjected to readability assessments with key items such as the employee handbook and health and safety manuals being totally re-written. All internal communications are now subject to the same assessment to ensure that they are suitable for their target audience.

The programme was implemented in only nine months from concept in January 2006 to launch in September 2006, but has already delivered exceptional results and is now being expanded to include the company’s sub contractors.

Partners

A flexible approach has been adopted in the delivery of the programme. All assessments are in working hours, unless requested otherwise. The training takes place outside of working hours to minimize operational impact. Employees are paid for 50% of the time they attend training. Certain non time critical areas allow training during working hours in lieu of payment.

Each learner has an individual skills plan ensuring tailored learning. Training sessions are held twice a week in a workshop style, i.e. employees can attend all or part of the sessions and it is not mandatory to attend consecutive sessions. This ensures a flexible fit with the learner’s other commitments.

To encourage participation, the concept of Workplace Learning Champions has been developed, similar to Union Learning Representatives (there is no union recognition). These Champions are all departmental trainers and coaches and more recently the current learners have become ‘unofficial’ champions, providing additional awareness.

Such has been the interest from the employees, Stephenson College who deliver the training have recruited an additional tutor to meet the demand.

Impact

1. Over 53% of the workforce have been assessed (450 assessments)

2. The accident rate amongst learners is 50% lower than the Company average

3. The absenteeism rate amongst learners is 0.86%, the Company average is 5.3%, representing an annual saving of £120,000

4. Employee turnover has fallen significantly since the launch of the programme, producing savings of £250,000

5. Productivity since the launch has increased by 12%