Iceland Frozen Foods has moved
training to the shopfloor and given staff clear skills targets in a bid to
reduce staff turnover by 20 per cent.
"Passport to
Success" shifts training from the classroom to equip staff with the skills
they need to progress.
Every member of staff
taking part has a training "passport" with over 160
"stamps" or training targets to aim for, instead of conventional
certificates of achievement.
Iceland’s HR manager
Beverley Newman wants the scheme, and other HR policies, to reduce the
business’s frontline staff turnover rate, from 42.5 per cent to around 22 per
cent.
She said, "The
scheme has improved our training system, so it is now tailored to frontline
staff. Before, we would train staff by using equipment such as videos, which would
mean that we were pulling them away from their jobs.
"With Passport to
Success, staff are being trained on the job."
Passport to Success
cost more than £100,000 to set up and aims to train 20,000 of staff.
Currently, a quarter
of the retail outlet’s new in-store employees leave within the first three
months. The supermarket wants to see that number reduced to 20 per cent by the
end of the year.
The scheme, which
started earlier this year, has "gone down a storm" with employees and
managers alike, according to Jason Stevens, Iceland’s organisation development
projects manager.
Stevens, who is the
scheme’s co-ordinator, said, "Training was not an interactive issue
before, but now they have the information constantly at hand.
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"Line managers
also love the scheme as it is so easy for them to monitor."
By paul nelson
