Mwell Stores Approach to Training and Development As one of the largest health food store chains in South Africa, with 623 stores and employing over 8,000 staff, NutriWell Stores needs to ensure that their employees are trained and developed to the highest standards. Located in urban areas and close to gyms, wellness and medical centres, NutriWell Stores' staff are committed to the companys vision of wellness for life and want to meet customers health needs through proper prevention, management, and treatment of their dietary and nutritional requirements. Thandeka Sithole, the new managing director appointed in 2022, took charge of the health food store chain at a time of rapid change and stiff competition. Thandeka identified a significant business threat coming from large supermarkets that had begun offering a one-stop-shop service, where customers could meet grocery as well as health food and supplement needs under one roof. To compete with these supermarkets, Thandeka realised that NutriWell Stores needed to improve levels of customer service as well as staff product knowledge and sales expertise. Beginning with NutriWells store supervisors, Thandeka placed emphasis on ensuring that staff spent more time building relationships with customers to better understand their nutritional and wellness needs and requirements. She also started spending time traveling to the NutriWell Stores across the country, interviewing staff about their concerns and better understanding the business and customer views of the brand. Soon afterwards, Thandeka established the Plus-Wellness training program, which was NutriWell Stores largest-ever training initiative. A series of customer service workshops were established to convey to supervisors the core customer service standards they were expected to deliver, as well as helping supervisors improve their listening and communication skills, allowing them to provide a more individualised, personal service to customers. The workshops were complemented with the provision of coaching sessions delivered by operational support managers, thus helping to reinforce and re-emphasise important lessons learned. To promote the program across the retail chain, NutriWell Stores collected and shared success stories from supervisors who participated in the workshops and coaching interventions. In addition, a Best-In-Wellness competition was run to identify leading stores and further promote supervisors. Training is also provided by NutriWell Stores to all staff through online modules. Employees can also work on special projects and secondments to broaden their knowledge, skills, and experience. To date, NutriWell Stores has reported improved levels of customer loyalty as a result of the training, as well as higher levels of confidence amongst supervisory staff. (Adapted from: McGuire, D. (2014) Human Resource Development. Second Edition. London: Sage.)

QUESTION 1 The High Impact Training Model is a six-phase model focused on providing effective, targeted training that moves the training effort forward. Discuss the extent to which the six phases of the High Impact Training Model are evident in the case study?