Supervisory & Management Development

Midlands Division of a National Retailer

The West Midlands region encompassed ten individual stores, each responsible for staff succession planning. A career management initiative was successfully piloted across the stores involving up to 40 sales associates with development potential.

Over a period of 6 months the individuals attended a range of commercial and interpersonal skills workshops focusing on areas such as selling, sales floor standards, customer service, profit and loss, communication, leadership and teamwork. In addition, each associate worked in a small cross functional group on a variety of projects agreed by senior commercial managers.

The final projects were presented to an extensive audience comprising of store representatives of all levels. Many of the groups’ recommendations were accepted and subsequently introduced into the business. Individuals’ commercial knowledge increased, as did performance and personal motivation. Boundaries between stores were broken down as the benefits of the joint training initiative were realised. Over 75% of the course delegates were subsequently promoted, many transferred to other stores in order to take up a career management opportunity. The initiative was repeated and led to other joint ventures such as recruitment and selection and induction training.

Customer Service

Utopia Bathrooms

As a privately owned British Company, the focus of Utopia is to create a range of simply stunning bathroom furniture and storage solutions to fit even the smallest British bathroom.

The company had grown successfully and organically over 15 years with limited director involvement in customer service. As the organisation grew, concerns evolved over the effectiveness of the current system used to provide customer service support. First Class kept people focused on customer needs and benefits, bringing an objective viewpoint that resulted in them successfully tweaking the existing system.

Ian Hall - Director

Health and Safety

Roomes Store steer a course towards safer delivery drivers

Associated Independent Stores member, Robin Ducker, General Manager of the Roomes Department Store in Upminster, approached First Class to arrange advanced driving skills for their delivery team. First Class organised the training in association with a Midlands based advanced driving skills company.

The request came from the drivers themselves who were keen to improve their skills and safety. With risk assessment and minimising risk of accidents having such high profile, Roomes’ insurance company were in full support.

Having put the drivers at their ease, the instructor talked through defensive driving techniques and, in a practical session, assessed the drivers’ standards.

After instruction the drivers were rated again and given a written report which showed the improvements that they achieved during the day.

Robin Ducker said that the drivers had really enjoyed the day, were not intimidated and pleased to be made aware of bad habits they had fallen into since taking their initial driving tests. They have all undertaken more training to further advance their driving skills.

Employment Law

Personal Development

Train the trainer - Manual Handling Workshop

Keenly aware of their legal and moral duty to ensure the safety of those who work for them, Aldiss of Fakenham approached First Class to assist them in developing a team of in-house trainers to deliver training for safe manual handling techniques.

In consultation with First Class, a two-day programme was designed. It provided delegates with specialist input on manual handling techniques and the basic skills to create a training session. The workshop included the impact of individuals’ different learning styles and how to manage group dynamics. By the end of the workshop delegates had designed and practised delivery of their own manual handling training session.

The two days were well received by the group, concentrated on the company's specific manual handling issues and increased skills and confidence. Long-term savings resulted, as the workshop created a team of trainers able to support each other and use the skills from the programme. The company is equipped to quickly run the necessary manual handling training for all new staff without having to wait for sufficient numbers to warrant the cost of bringing in an external trainer or booking places on open programmes.

Team Development