Case Study: Learning and Development at

Choc Co.
Online Case Study: Learning and Development at Choc Co.

Choc Co. is one of the world's largest confectionery businesses with significant market share in
many of the world's biggest confectionery markets, including many emerging markets. It has a
long and proud tradition, stretching back more than 150 years, including a long history of
developing its employees, which has remained part of its ethos during its progress to becoming a
global company.

Despite very positive sales figures over the last 12months, Choc Co. has prioritized
streamlining the business to make it more competitive and has placed a strong emphasis on
reducing cost over the next 18 months. Despite being keen to preserve its longstanding
reputation as a firm that is committed to developing all its employees, in respect of learning and
development, this ‘streamlining’ activity has focused on:

 Ensuring a clear return on investment in training activities

 Changing the way that learning programmers are delivered and being more creative in
developing approaches to learning
 Connecting training activities to the strategic needs of the firm.

The most important driver of the assessment of its training provision at Choc Co. is change.
Whilst performing well in the marketplace, senior management continue to express discontent
with levels of productivity and employee performance. Moreover, senior management has
determined that the company needs to become more flexible and adaptable to respond to change
in its market context, for example by an ability to adapt organizational structures to meet new
business needs or through the introduction of technological innovation. However, as a
traditionally minded employer, and with low levels of employee turnover at shop floor level,
Choc co. appears to have instilled in its workers a mindset of stability and steady progress, which
is at odds with competition in a rapidly changing global economy. Therefore, Choc Co. wants to
move towards a system of continuous improvement by creating a culture whereby workers are
empowered to implement small incremental changes, rather than have substantial change
imposed on them from time to time.

Identifying training needs

Traditionally, training needs analysis at Choc Co. has been ‘gap-led’. In other words,
training tends to be focused where Choc Co. identifies a gap in capability – for example, where
the introduction of new technology requires worker skill to be updated, company policy is
changed or a key worker leaves the firm, requiring training to be provided to their replacement.
Typically this gap-led identification of need is conducted at a local level, with little reference
made to the wider national or international workforce.
 Whilst workers can put themselves forward for training courses, including those provided
by local education providers, there is no formal channel for doing this and access to such training
often comes down to personal relationships and the constraints imposed by departmental
budgets. The culture at Choc Co. is very much one in which training needs are typically
identified for workers rather than by workers.

Delivery of training

Currently, the company runs a number of large training events each year designed to
update manufacturing staff on everything from health and safety changes, business strategy and
company performance to the adoption of new production technology. This is sometimes coupled
with skills training for these workers as and when appropriate. This has traditionally been done at
the specialist training center at their largest production facility, which doubles as the company’s
headquarters. This practice partly stems from a time when the company only operated two
production facilities in the country. It now operates across six geographically dispersed locations.
Workers tend to view these training events as a bit of a waste of time, particularly when they are
delivered by consultants with little real understanding of working processes at Choc Co. It is not
unknown for workers to claim that the training they receive is outdated and tells them nothing
that they don’t already know.

The head of training and development, responding to a call to cut costs from the HR
director, is now of the opinion, however, that such long training programmers, often of up to
three or four days, are no longer the most cost-effective and efficient means by which to develop
the staff. Such training has the dual problem of requiring regular investment and repeat sessions
to cover workers on different shifts or at different plants, as well as leading to undesirable
downtime of certain aspects of production. In particular, the head of L&D is keen to reduce a
reliance on external training providers to design and deliver interventions to different workforce
groups, from senior management to shop floor workers.

Moreover, the company has historically not evaluated the impact of these events. In the
new era of cost-cutting and added value, however, the company is keen to ensure that the impact
of all training interventions, however big or small, is measured.

Employee development programmers

A major investment in L&D at Choc Co. is in its manufacturing apprenticeship scheme

and graduate development programmer, both of which are widely viewed as models of good
practice in the industry and beyond. These programmers are, however, under significant scrutiny
by senior management to better understand the extent to which this investment provides value to
the firm. One particular area under review is the turnover of employees who complete these
programmers and then leave to work at other firms.

Ray Barbie, the head of learning and development at Choc Co. recently attended a
seminar at a local university on ‘the changing nature of workplace HRD’. He was slightly
alarmed to find out that much of the company’s practice was seen as outdated. In particular, he
was interested in examining how some more contemporary approaches and techniques in HRD
could help the company both reduce costs and better performance through continuous
improvement.

Questions:

1. What changes would you recommend that Choc Co. make to their current learning and
development provision in order to reduce costs and improve performance?

Answer:
I like to recommend the subsequent changes to Choc Co to scale back their cost and
improve performance with their current learning.
 The Plenty of online roads are accessible to firms that need to decrease their yearly costs.
Numerous organizations put resources into online class, web conferencing and video
conferencing arrangements, as these stages empower colleagues to get preparing from
different goals. Imaginative programming can have expansive impacts on your business.
Organizations could utilize increasingly telecommuters, which could enable their
organizations to kill huge numbers of the expenses usually connected with overseeing
workplaces.
 Choc Co. workers must get top to bottom preparing to finish regular errand. They can
decrease the preparation cost of organization for their workers. Consenting to government
guidelines and guaranteeing that laborers can follow severe rules normally is crucial,
however superfluous instructional exercises could be dispensed with.

2. Discuss how e-learning, competency frameworks and improved knowledge-sharing at

Choc Co. might help to cut costs and make the HRD activity at Choc Co. more strategic.

E-learning may help to choc co with various focuses.

 E-learning can spare occasions without rotting learning benefits for choc co.
 E-learning permits you to sign on when you can and complete your preparation in
a convenient way. By signing in and finishing your preparation in a couple of
hours, it spares the additional hours and some of the time days that you would
typically spend in a study hall or in any event, heading out to and from the
occasion.
 E-learning can limit travel costs for choc co.
 In PC based preparing program, you needn't bother with an on location educator.
It is dependent upon the student to get to it when they wish to. That implies you
don't have to pay for the movement and settlement for the coaches.
  E-gaining limit time away from work for choc co

3. How might the firm seek to ensure a return on investment for its learning and
development activity?

More than the financial return, a fruitful preparing program is additionally estimated by
its adequacy. There are a lot of approaches to quantify the viability of your preparation
programs, for example

 Pre and Post preparing Assessment

Comprehending what workers anticipate from a preparation program is an

incredible method to catch their inclinations and to fuse these into the meetings.
It's likewise a powerful method to keep them persuaded and connected all through
the learning meetings. Studies are the most widely recognized approach to
evaluate whether the preparation has been effective or not, likewise called "post-
occasion criticism." actually, as per the Association for Talent Development, 90%
of associations play out this sort of study to quantify the ROI of their preparation
activities

 Data Mining
A few organizations utilize learning the executive’s frameworks that give
a few measurements and create reports that give bits of knowledge into the
adequacy of preparing. These can incorporate the time spent on each course or
movement, the dropout rates, and an opportunity to finish everything or action.
Every one of these factors can propose significant bits of knowledge. For
instance, a high dropout rate could imply that the meeting was hard to
comprehend.
 Assessing the Experience
Top gifts search for top preparing. As per explore by Manpower Group
Global Marketing, 65% of workers hope to get preparing from their supervisors
or pioneers. The effect of preparing on commitment and maintenance is likewise
an extraordinary factor to consider. Giving effective preparing doesn't just
 guarantee that it lives up to representatives' desires, however it likewise holds the
ideal individuals in a troublesome ability advertise.
 Assessing Demonstrated Engagement
High showed commitment recommends that workers are engrossing the
new information and abilities they're escaping preparing. Brisk surveys and
rivalries that test their insight help the preparation facilitators see who is locked
in.