wickes & pah
TRANSCRIPT
AshfordTailored Training Ltd
Make the training budget
stre-e-e-tch!
The old do-it-yourself slogan ‘Don’t move,
improve!’ fi ts well in these straitened fi nancial
times! So when the training department at top
home improvement business Wickes wanted
to save some cash without abandoning their
Master Programme Level 1 training, they
turned to us.
Our clients always get great value for money
from us. But we’re always ready to help
them make savings when they need to. Our
relationship with Wickes goes back eight years,
so we were happy to help them trim the costs
of the materials that we’d developed for them.
Account manager Peter Gammon came up
with a workable solution: he pointed out that,
because Wickes were no longer updating their
content, a loose-leaf-in-binder format was not
really necessary now.
He produced a new mock-up of the content,
turning it into a wiro-bound (or spiral-bound)
book, merging the previously, relatively
expensive, tabbed dividers into the page layout.
This enabled the unit cost per book to
drop from £15 to £9 – quite a cost
saving across a total of 1,000 books.
Our cost-consciousness didn’t stop there.
We also helped Pets at Home apply a tighter
leash to their training spend. See page 7.
masterprogramme
level 1
Name:
Master Prog Wiro Cover A5.indd 1
Transport Health and Safety/Driving Guide
Top dogs?A quick glance at our client list willshow you that we only work with thebest. That’s no coincidence. Researchhas clearly shown that the mostsuccessful businesses are those thatinvest in developing their people.
So it’s no surprise to us to see thatone of our biggest customers, Pets atHome, posted end-of-year results thatshowed almost a 30% rise in profi ts and announced a boosted store expansion programme for 2009.In the last fi ve years, the company has also reduced staff turnover by more than 50%.The pet retailer is justifi ably famous in business circles for its commitment to its people and for its customer service.
We’d like to think we’ve played a small part
in its success. We’ve worked with the training
department, headed up by Kathy Toft, for eight
years, and helped create its fl agship four-step
development programme, which runs from
induction to management training.
Together, we also developed an innovative
customer service board game, several other
successful service initiatives, and the supporting
materials for its behaviour-based performance
development and recruitment framework.
One of the most eye-catching recent projects
was the Pets at Home Colleague Handbook.
This cast aside the rather staid and formal
traditional image of the employee handbook
and rejoiced in full colour, lavish use of
photographs and lots of humour.
If you too have a passion for people
development and want to help your
company follow in the pawprints of Pets at
Home, get in touch!
ColleagueHandbook
Ashford Tailored Training, Wallington House, 35A Waterside Gardens, Fareham, Hampshire PO16 8SDTelephone: 0845 555 65 65 ● Fax: 01329 242931 ● Email: [email protected]
Website: www.ashfordtraining.co.uk ● Registration No: 6545463