Back to the drawing board to train your staff

Back to the drawing board to train your staff: "

Extract from PrintWeek 3rd June

CASE STUDY: COMMUNISIS

Communisis is a 1,300-person marketing organisation, and its print division in Leeds employs 470 people and produces coupons, statements and other direct mail pieces for the likes of Barclays, Tesco, BT and the NHS.

Its size has not insulated it from the effects of the economic downturn, however, and HR manager Daniela Walsh reports that training budgets have been restricted for the past three years.

“Learning and development don’t have to cost loads in order to work,” she says. “We’ve been sharing knowledge and skills from in-house experts within the business, as well as looking at how technology can help, and accessing the government funding that is still available.”

Most notably this has led to the company becoming involved in NVQs and apprenticeships.

“We’ve developed very strong partnerships with Leeds City College and Leeds University to create bespoke NVQ apprenticeship programmes,” explains Rosie Smyth, human resources adviser. These are mainly production oriented, but increasingly in softer skills too.

She adds: “We also do a lot of interdepartmental training, secondments and job shadowing to share skills and knowledge around the organisation. We have a library, and quite often once someone has been on a training course they’ll add a book or a handout to it. We’re about to organise it, so it’s easier for people to access the information they need.”

Lastly, Walsh says: “We have taken advantage of free e-learning on sites such as Vision to Learn, and the VTC training site, which has thousands of videos teaching people IT skills. It’s all basic training, but makes a major difference to our company and doesn’t cost us anything.”

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