How to gain competitive advantage through Training & Development

Boston Pizza

At Boston Pizza, the managers lacked soft skills and the employee retention rate was too low. It is an industry where the turnover rate tends to be quite high. Therefore Boston Pizza decided to train its employees in order to gain a competitive edge in the
market and to attract large number of customers. It sent the employees at Boston Pizza College for initial training and conducted a secret survey afterwards. The survey report reflected encouraging results while the employee retention rate also went high.
This is how Boston Pizza were successful in training their staff and creating a positive impression on its customers.

Seattle City Light

Seattle City Light uses extensive training programmes in helping out their new employees with the technicalities of plant work. It asks the former or near-to-retirement employees to train its new work force so that it could prevent the electrical demand
from aging dams and tunnels. The training process involves proper examination, on the job training before the final selection takes place. This is how the company goes through its training phase in order to build competency and provide improved service to
its customers.

Starbucks Coffee

Starbucks Coffee provides improved service to its employees and in this case store managers serve as the trainers. It involves a full fledge knowledge of various coffee products and how to attract a large customer base. Starbucks provide it’s trainers an
opportunity to serve customers while on training by preparing beverages, helping out customers and interacting them in every possible manner. The company also favours shutting down a few of its stores to ensure employee training before giving them a free hand
to deal with its customers. Starbucks prefer closing down its operations for one day rather than permanently just to ensure that the customers go back satisfied.

US Airways

Another company, US Airways, gains competitive edge by providing aviation training to its staff including the opening and closing of emergency exits, helping passengers inflate the raft etc. Proper drills are then conducted to ensure that the staff is up
to date and the customers are getting proper attention and service. This is how, US Airways builds a competitive edge over its competitors and the process goes on repeatedly after every two years.

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Posted by Taha Habib on Jan 17 2012. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry