Employee Training and Development

Explain the difference between training and development. How have changes in customer expectations affected Tesco and its need to train staff?

Training and Development is the field which is concerned with organizational activity aimed at bettering the performance of individuals and groups in Organizational settings.

Training is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, observers of the labour market recognize as of 2008 the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications; to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life.

Development is a process that strives to build the capacity to achieve and sustain a new desire state that benefits the Organization or community and the world around them.

As per TESCO training is the acquisition of knowledge and skills in order for a person to carry out a specific task or a job.
Training benefits employees in several ways;
Increase their sense of ownership in the business.
Build more organized productive and flexible people and are better able to meet the needs of internal and external customers.
New skills and abilities in areas such as decision making can empower staff which makes them more effective.

As per TESCO Development is all about helping the person to grow and extend their abilities. TESCO takes a shared responsibility approach to training and development. The trainee is primarily responsible for his or her development.

TESCO has expanded since by then a combination of acquisition of new stores, retail services and by adapting to the needs of consumers. TESCO’s primary aim is to serve the customer; keeping existing customers happy is important, as they are more likely to return.

“We always want to provide our customers with the best shopping experience and set the standard in the United Kingdom. Focusing on food first, we are making a £ 1 billion commitment this year to improve the shopping trip, during driving a strong pace of improvement in the things that matters for customers – service range, quality, price, availability and the store environment.

One of the largest elements of their investment is in increased staffing levels, training and equipment for key departments in existing stores. They saw marked improvement in customer’s perceptions and sales performance of 200 pilot stores. This success has given them the confidence to move quickly to apply these changes to all of their large stores – an investment of over £200 million.

Over next 2 years, they will create 20,000 new jobs to deliver new levels of excellence in customer service. Customers will benefit from more staff on the shop floor at busy times, greater staff expertise and enhanced service across the store.

Fresh food in an area where customers really appreciate having dedicated, specially trained and knowledgeable staff with the additional investment in staffing, training and equipment, the fruits and veg team can focus on fresh products, improving product availability and presentation for customers.

They are viewing and refreshing their entire range of over 8,000 TESCO brand products with quality improvements helping customers to manage on tight budgets. They have come up with a strong variety of ranges to appeal to the needs of different customers. Also they have applied more personalization and localization in stores to help them tailor their ranges much more for their local area.

The way stores look and feel is an important part of the shopping trip. Customers wanted a warmer, friendlier look and feel, so they have accelerated their refresh program to improve the environment in all their stores.

The service they offer in stores – like an optician, pharmacy, phone shop or restaurant helps the customers to get more out of their everyday shopping trip.

Growing their online business in all their markets is a strategic priority for them and it shows how they are adapting to their customer’s changing needs.

Customers increasingly expect to be able to shop where, when and how they want. In developing their online offer, they are drawing on their convenient store network and our expertise to meet-out customer’s needs and help make their lives easier, progressing towards an offering where customers can shop with them anywhere anything and anyhow.

Tesco has;
Trained personal shoppers to choose the freshest products and pack them carefully.
Friendly drivers to deliver shopping to customer’s doorstep.
Shop online any time of the day.
Amend the order up to midnight the day before the delivery. Introducing Tesco club card to shop from home.

As technology moves forward they used it to help makes shopping more easier for customers with a mobile web platform for shopping on the go.

TESCO delivers benefits for customer through Tesco bank;
Transaction services, Insurance, Credit cards and loans
Their core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their life time loyalty. So they focused on providing great customer service. At some of their customer service centres, staff are not incentivised to sell, which means that discussions with customers can focus solely on meeting their banking and insurance needs. Their transaction services- ATMs and travel bureaux offer customers convenience while they are on the go.

Great service can make a customer’s day, and they achieve this when their people live Tesco values; “No one tries harder for customers” and “Treat people how we like to be treated”. Their business is built on the commitment of more than half a million people across the world, in return for their commitment, they offer them good jobs and career opportunities with Tesco. Developing their people takes many forms, from training in their state-of-art training academy in Asia, where they combine theory with practical interactive experience and a delivery style that enables delegates to take an active part in their learning experience to support the development of management positions.

List the methods of training carried out by Tesco. Describe how training needs are identified.

Tesco’s aim is to expand and diversify the requirements of people in the business on right place at right time. They think that the key point of business success is also to train and develop their people.

Tesco is very huge and if new stores are opened in new locations clearly means that Tesco should adapt the requirements of the people of those areas.
For example; Tesco opens a new store in highly populate luxurious area, then the customers in that area will be of high level and they will require the goods accordingly. So Tesco there has to train their employees so that they can handle these luxurious customers.

They believe that the investment in their employees will be the best return for the company itself. They ensure that people who join Tesco get the best learning, training and development to do their job and develop at Tesco. Tesco says “we have trained ourselves to be obsessed about training”. There is a training program for every major and minor career at Tesco.

Tesco offers employees both on-the-job training and off-the-job training.
On-the-job training methods at Tesco include;
Shadowing- a person already in the job shows the employee how to do it.
Coaching- a manager or designated colleague will help trainees work through problems and inspire them to find solutions.
Mentoring- a more experienced member of staff acts as an adviser.
Job rotation /secondment- the trainee has the opportunity of covering their target role, taking full responsibility on a temporary or limited basis.

For the employees, o the job training is directly relevant to their work, they get to know the people in their area and feel part of the team faster.

Off-the-job training is often more appropriate for training is specific new skills or for developing the individual, in areas such as team building, communications, or organization and planning. It usually involves attending external courses run by professional training organizations or qualified Tesco training staff.

They recognize their training needs through identifying the gap in knowledge and skills. Tesco employees belong from wide range of skill levels and it is important to evaluate the performance. So any possible skill shortage is estimated. Gaps are identified through Personal Development Program. Employees and managers negotiate with each other to find ways to fill those gaps.

Tesco regularly evaluates the performance of its employees in order to anticipate any possible skills shortage. This help managers and employees decide whether they have the correct knowledge, skills, understanding and resources to carry out their job effectively. Through annual reviews and career discussions, employees are able to apply for training suited to their needs.

Analyse Tesco’s method of developing its employees. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of such a programme.

Tesco’s options programme provides a long term strategy for development. It offers for example workshops focusing on both leadership behaviours and operating skills. The employee’s personal development plan includes activity plans, a learning log and plan, do, review checklist to monitor when plans are completed. This allows the trainees to carry out their own analysis of progress.

Personal development helps to produce long lasting competencies. This means employees become more positive, productive and valuable to the organization in the long term. Recruiting new staff is more expensive than retaining existing staff, so for Tesco, retaining staff is extremely important. Development also helps increase the level of employee motivation. Motivation theorists suggest that if the people are given skills to do their jobs well, the support to grow their abilities and greater responsibility, this makes them more effective in their roles. Tesco requires staff who can be flexible and who can adapt to change. It also needs to ensure it has the right calibre of staff to build its management team of the future.

Tesco employees are encouraged to ask themselves strategic questions in order to assess their skills and ability to progress;
Do I know how?
Can I do it now?
What are my current skills?
What do I need to achieve a higher position?

Tesco sees it as a priority to develop leadership at every level in every part of the business. In the last year over 2,900 managers, of which 85% were internal promotions, were appointed in the UK and thousands more employees promoted. Once in every 10 Tesco employees take part in development activities and as many as one in 30 are on its Options programme. Tesco also uses a method known as 360-degree appraisal. This means all stakeholders who have contact with the employees assess the person’s performance and give feedback. For example, a store department manager may get feedback from the superiors; they are “buddy”, other department managers, the HR department and their team. This helps to identify areas that may require further development. Also it may be a bias decision because in this method, the feedback is taken by most of the people who the employee associates. This is only used for the development of the employees not for rewarding them.

Tesco also uses a more informal approach to development by asking employees to write down three things they believe that they are good at and three things they believe that they could do better. The employee identifies actions to continue to do more of the good things and in to areas they could do better.

Managers and trainees hold a weekly informal review session as well as more formal 4 weekly sessions to track progress against their personal development plans. The feedback is recorded and is carefully scored. Trainees are given a colour coded development rating.
Red- where progress is not on schedule
Amber- where some elements need more work
Green- where all activities are on target. Blue- where the trainee is ahead of the programme and using skills to add value.

Tesco has used appropriate development methods which they can get more out of the investment they have made to retain their employees.

Evaluate the benefits for Tesco in providing a structured training programme. To what extent do you think the training has achieved a Return on Investment?

Tesco has a flexible and structured approach to training and development, which adapts to individual employee needs. This allows people identified as having the potential and desire to do a bigger or different role to take part in training to develop their skills and leadership capability.

Tesco provides tools for highly structured monitoring and evaluation of training and development. This includes scheduled tasks, time tables, measures and checklists. Employee assesses themselves by setting objectives in Activity Plans, Personal Development Plans and recording outcomes in learning logs. These continue to measure their improvement in performance after training. Activity Plans need to have SMART objectives;
Specific- Describes exactly what needs doing
Measurable- Has a target that can be measured against
Achievable- Is possible within the trainee’s current role, skills and experience.
Realistic- Is achievable within the time and resources available
Time frame- Has a clear deadline.

Tesco has net profits of around £3 billion. Tesco’s primary aim is “to serve the customer”. Keeping existing customers happy is important, as they are more likely to return. This is more cost effective for the business that acquiring new ones. Tesco has achieved return on investment to a greater extend through training.