ASDA-Meeting Business Needs through

Training and Development

ASDAs mission is to be Britains best value retailer exceeding customer needs, everyday with their purpose to save everyone money, everyday. Their mission and purpose greatly depend upon their dedicated and well trained colleagues. ASDA is a private limited company, with headquarters in Leeds and parent company, the Wal-Mart gives value to money, whether its their or their customers. ASDA try to be social through its employment and career opportunities in communities, charity, healthy activities and by providing low prices to its customers. ASDA provide equal opportunities to its employees for career development. 80% of their managers start their careers at stores. ASDA greatly support young blood in company. Their each store takes in two local secondary school kids to encourage young people. Every ASDA store employs a college to help it socialize. ASDA currently employs 170,000 colleagues. This case study focuses on how ASDAs training and development programs enable its General Store Managers (GSMs) to develop the skills and experience they need to become the Regional Operations Managers (ROMs) and senior leaders of the future. ASDA uses both on-the-job and off-the-job training to train their colleagues. On the job GSMs begin to experience ROM role to put their skills into practice. On-the-job training activities accounts for 80% and off-the-job training in which GSMs develop the required skills to be ROM through modules and series of external coaching accounts for 20% of training and development activities. Due to high benefits of training and development ASDA uses both, these benefits of training and development is; High levels of colleague retention. Increased productivity. Improved motivation and moral. Good corporate image. Increased customer loyalty.

Colleagues can experience different business environments. To become a ROM, GSMs may work as Ambient Trading Manager or Fresh Trading Manager. It provides them with insight into all aspect into daily business activities.

To indentify colleagues with skills required for senior roles is so necessary for succession plan. To identify development opportunities ASDA uses; Development days which include business simulation, presentations and in depth interviews. Psychometric tests. Leadership surveys. Diagnosis with line managers. Annual appraisals.

GSM-ROM program fits around a GSMs personal experiences and existing skills. This allows managers to address the challenges in their own store. By promoting and supporting progression at all levels, ASDA enables its colleagues to focus on being at their best and growing within the company. The results are increased morale, quality of work, higher productivity, and in the long-term, increased colleague retention and profitability. In this way, everyone in the company delivers the highest standards of service to meet ASDAs objectives and help the business to reach its goals.

Questions
1. Describe the difference between training and development. Why might both be needed? Training of a new employee is an integral part of his induction and orientation. Training is imparted so that he understands his roles and responsibilities and learns to perform the tasks entrusted to him with ease and with efficiency. It is only after a brief training period that a new employee is able to perform his job at a satisfactory level. Training makes an employee more productive for the organization and is thus concerned with his immediate improvement. Development of an employee is an ongoing process which continues well beyond training. The focus of development process is the person himself where the focus of training is the organization. Development concerns with making the employee efficient enough to handle critical situations in future. So while training concentrates on short term needs of the organization, development looks after long term goals of the organization. All employees want to be valuable and remain competitive in the labor market at all times. This can only be achieved through employee training and development. Employees will always want to develop career-enhancing skills, which will always lead to employee motivation and retention. First training is important to make employee able to work effectively and then after that employees are required to develop their careers to move forward in their life.

2. Explain why colleague retention is important to ASDA. Colleague retention is important for ASDA because it; Give new trained leaders for future and solves the problem of new management when it is time for change or take-over. As ASDA want to fill 80% of their top level appointments through internal promotion, colleague retention help them achieve them this easily. This helps them retain their customers and increase their profits and productivity. This leads to high morals which lead to more motivated team work. Colleague retention help create a succession plan that help ASDA in long run. Colleague development is motivating and makes workers feel more valued. This can improve productivity and quality of service, as well as keeping labor turnover and absenteeism low. 3. Use the ASDA colleagues profiles to analyze why training and development adds value to the business. Training and development of ASDA colleagues can increase value of business in following ways; It increases colleagues productivity by encouraging them by providing them with opportunities for training and developing their careers by improving their ranks. It can satisfy customer more effectively, can reduce costs and increase the productivity. As colleagues are happy with their jobs and are well trained to deal with customers this can increase the customer loyalty and retention. Colleagues are highly motivated through provision of opportunities to move forward in careers fast and easily. This encourages them to plan and work affectively individually and in team.

4. Evaluate the various methods that ASDA uses in its training and development program. Judge why it uses so many, give reasons for you answer. ASDA uses both on-the-job and off-the-job training to develop their colleagues for every job level. To start working as a ROM a GSM need to complete different type of activities. On job training activities for GSMs are like; Covering their ROMs duties when they are on break. Receiving guidance from mentors on the Retail Board. Attending different meetings on behalf of the ROM. And owning regional projects. Off job ROM requirement training for GSMs include series of modules and external coaching. These different programs are; Being at my Best program focuses on emotional intelligence and help GSMs to understand their strengths and areas that they can develop in. Multi-site coaching is to improve a colleagues capability to coach across the range of GSMs using coaching methods and styles. Influencing across the businesses provides an opportunity to learn how to communicate in affective manner. Thought Leadership is to develop the capability to lead a team through innovation, creative thinking and leading without fear of loss. ASDA also provide telephonic coaching to its GSMs to help them develop their careers. ASDA use different training and development programs for different reasons. They use onthe-job training to develop their current colleagues careers. As ASDA always want to fill their 80% of their top positions through internal promotions and successions, so they use on-the-job training. And on other side ASDA use off-the-job for 20% of their development program, they use it to get external skills that cant be learned through on-the-job training. This type of training is used at ASDA for such employees who are trained for some specific new skill or for development of individual skills. Mainly areas covered in off-the-job training are teambuilding, interpersonalcommunication skills, presentation skills, organization and planning skills. Off-the-job training is also used for new hired. Through such kind of training newly hired employees get a chance to meet other trainees and learn more about company and companys main objectives rapidly.