You have been assigned as a Learning and Development officer for Umake-it, a large retail furniture store in Croydon, South London. The business sells self-assembly furniture and has 5 other stores throughout the UK.

Currently, Umake-it employs over 2,000 staff nationally and has 250 staff in the Croydon store. The staff is employed on full-time and part-time contracts and they also have drivers who work as self-employed contractors. The Croydon store has 150 customers facing Colleagues ( 35 of these are Supervisors with line management responsibilities), 40 Warehouse staff, 10 Kitchen staff and cooks, 20 Cleaners, 10 office based support including Payroll, Human Resources, Learning and Development, Finance and Marketing and 20 Drivers.

Profits have taken a real turn for the worse following the pandemic and declared recession and in the last 4 months, Umake-it have released their results, which show that the increased costs of raw materials and transport due to inflation have impacted negatively on the profit margins. Despite an understanding that pay levels in the company are competitive for the retail industry, the local food retail stores in the area have been recruiting staff and you notice that some of your experienced supervisors have given in their notice recently. The age range and makeup of your team appear to be mainly 18 – 40 on the shop floor, with lots of students joining for short periods of time whilst they are completing their degrees or further studies, parents who mainly work part-time and warehouse staff who are mainly men and work full time.

Taking into account the short-term student recruitment, staff retention averages about a year amongst customer-facing and cleaning staff and 2.5 years for other departments. Until recently the results of the employee motivation survey have been positive however the exit interviews for the staff who have been leaving have highlighted a trend in the need for a clearer progression route in the business, especially for younger members of staff. When you go to find the training records for the staff you notice that they are haphazard and it appears that not all staff have had the same approach to onboarding – some have been given a talk by their line managers, some have just been told to ask colleagues if they need help.

Your Task

You work for the Human Resources team and your line manager has recently asked you to devise a series of training solutions that will help to solve some of the problems highlighted in the Croydon business with a real emphasis on how to increase productivity and to combat the profitability issue and the poaching/retention.

Start with a training needs analysis and then produce your training plan with clear recommendations for improvement. Don’t forget to justify why you have chosen your training solutions and show how they will be evaluated in the long term.