3.6 Training & Development Practice Questions

Text 2 — Kettlewood Care Ltd

Kettlewood Care Ltd owns 12 care homes in the East Midlands and employs 540 staff. Many of the care assistants it recruits have no previous experience of working in care.

All new employees complete a three-day induction before they work with residents. New care assistants then spend their first month working alongside an experienced colleague, who supervises them as they carry out their duties.

The company also pays for care assistants to study vocational qualifications in health and social care, and last year it started an apprenticeship scheme for school leavers. Labour turnover in the care sector is high, and in the past Kettlewood Care Ltd has had to recruit externally to fill senior roles.

Year	Spending on training (£)	Labour turnover (%)
2021	84 000	32
2022	96 000	29
2023	120 000	24
2024	144 000	21

Harelands Garden Centre

Harelands Garden Centre (HGC) is owned by Priya Sandhu. It sells plants, tools and garden furniture from a six-acre site in Devon and employs 14 permanent members of staff. Each spring HGC takes on 10 temporary employees to cope with the busy season.

At present, a temporary employee is given a 20-minute talk by a supervisor on the first morning and then works on the tills alongside an experienced member of staff. Last spring HGC received complaints that temporary staff could not answer questions about plants and did not know where products were kept. One temporary employee left the delivery gate unlocked overnight.

Priya is considering a one-day induction programme for all 10 temporary employees. It would include a tour of the site, fire and health and safety procedures, meeting the permanent staff, and practice on the tills before the garden centre opens.

Table 1: Costs of the proposed one-day induction programme

Cost item	Cost
Trainer's time for the day	£180
Handbook for each temporary employee	£4
Wages paid to each temporary employee for the induction day	£84

Thornbeck Kitchens Ltd

Thornbeck Kitchens Ltd (TK) manufactures fitted kitchens in Leeds and installs them in customers' homes. It employs 60 people, including 12 fitters. Factory employees use heavy cutting machinery. Every new factory employee completes a two-day induction covering health and safety, machine shut-down procedures and TK's quality-checking system.

TK gives every customer a five-year guarantee and repairs faulty installations free of charge. Four of its 12 fitters joined in the last year. A new fitter is shown what to do by the team leader on the first morning and then works alone in customers' homes. Fitters who joined TK over 10 years ago were trained when kitchens used only wooden worktops. TK now sells composite worktops, which are cut and sealed in a different way.

To reduce complaints, TK is considering two options:

• Option 1: send all 12 fitters on a three-day off-the-job course run by a specialist trainer, costing £450 per fitter. The course covers composite worktops and leads to a recognised qualification.
• Option 2: a four-week on-the-job programme, in which every new fitter works alongside an experienced fitter before fitting a kitchen alone.

Table 1: Customer complaints about kitchen fitting in the last 12 months

Cause of complaint	Number of complaints
Damage to composite worktops during fitting	48
Cupboard doors not aligned	26
Appliances wired incorrectly	12
Fitting not completed on the agreed date	9
Total	95

Fenrow Logistics plc

Fenrow Logistics plc delivers parcels for online retailers across the UK and the Netherlands. It employs 3 600 drivers and 900 warehouse staff. Drivers are paid £13.20 an hour.

Two years ago, large numbers of drivers left within six months of joining. New drivers were given a two-hour induction and then sent out with a hand-held scanner they had never used before. Complaints from online retailers about damaged parcels and missed deliveries rose sharply.

Last year the operations director, Femi Adeyemi, introduced a new training programme. Every new driver now spends five days working alongside a mentor before driving alone, and all drivers complete two days of refresher training each year on the scanner software and on safe loading. The programme costs £1.9 million a year. Recruiting and inducting each new driver costs Fenrow £2 500.

The finance director has asked whether Fenrow should continue the training programme.

Table 1: Drivers leaving Fenrow

Year	Number of drivers leaving
Year 1 (before the programme)	480
Year 2 (after the programme)	384

Codewyn Software plc

Codewyn Software plc writes accounting software used by businesses in 40 countries. It employs 1 800 people at offices in Manchester, Berlin and Bengaluru, having grown from 400 employees five years ago. Chief executive Noor Haddad says the business sells its software on the promise that it is easy to use and never goes wrong.

Every developer receives ten days of formal training a year, and new employees complete a six-week induction before they are allowed to work on customer software. Together these cost Codewyn Software £2.1 million a year. Team leaders hold a performance review with each developer twice a year, in which training needs are agreed.

Last year 210 developers left, many of them to join rival software businesses that pay up to 20% more. Codewyn Software spends £900 000 a year on recruitment, and 40% of its advertised developer posts take more than three months to fill. Customers have complained about faults in the latest version of the software.

Noor believes that training is the key to Codewyn Software's future success.