Making changes with a pro-active approach to
training
Mylor Yacht Harbour - Large Company Award
Winners
For the staff at Mylor Yacht Harbour the concept of training
involves much more than individuals attending one-off courses.
Training has now become an on-going part of the company culture and
this approach has been so successful that the company has won the
BMF Large Company Training and Development Award.
The company has adopted a training philosophy whereby staff are
encouraged to create a working environment where they regularly
reassess their attitude to their jobs, their fellow employees and
of course those all important customers. Integral to this is that
each employee constantly evaluates their own working practices and
sees how this impacts on others. The aim is to get individuals at
all levels to see where improvements can be made.
General Manager Jonathan Fielding gives a straightforward
example: "In terms of company culture, improvements might be
just simple things like when someone goes and collects goods off
site they ensure they bring any documentation back and hand it to
the right person – that can save a huge amount of paperwork if we
need to contact the supplying company for instance," says Jonathan.
"This sort of thing makes everybody's life easier. It's about when
people realise that these tiny little things do make a difference
and people themselves say I can make a difference."
In essence Mylor has achieved better performance results by
getting staff to adopt the one thing that many people are supposed
to be reluctant to accept – and that is the concept of change. "In
any company there is a resistance to new ideas but an external
advisor woke us up to the fact that we had a problem," said
Jonathan. The external review of how they operated proved to be a
catalyst for change and a programme of customer service training
was undertaken by all staff. An initiative called "The Way Forward"
was put in place to look at all aspects of working practices and
training. The aim of this was to fundamentally change how the
company perceived itself and was perceived by others.
Staff who previously had no idea of what other people did at the
company were given the opportunity to learn so that everybody could
get a better understanding of the role of others in the company.
"Managers were asked to look at how they could facilitate it so
that staff themselves could make a difference which would then
prevent the need for anyone having to deal with the consequences of
poor performance at the other end of the action," says Jonathan. A
key aim was to achieve better communication all round and the
training courses allowed them to review how they operated and
interacted with each other and their customers.
In addition to significant developments such as a company
apprenticeship scheme Jonathan also highlighted a way that a
culture of training was aimed to specifically help the established
workforce: "We are an employer of choice so we have a very low
staff turnover. This is excellent in one respect in that we have
loyalty and continuity to ensure quality but problematic in
another," explained Jonathan. "What it doesn't do is give us the
change in skill sets to bring in new ideas. I recognised this
fairly early on and said the only way we are going to do this is to
train in new ideas."
As well as the BMF Award the company has also won other awards
for their training initiatives and the process of continued
education at all levels for all staff is ongoing. Jonathan
concludes: "From the work experience employee to management it is
essential to encourage the acquisition of new knowledge and
experiences to keep enthusiasm and interest alive and to remain on
the front edge of industry standards."