Tong Garden Centre celebrates e learning investment
When Tong Garden Centre became a client after a change of ownership in 2015 , they had just 45 staff. Today they employ over 180 people and the People and Culture team continue to invest to attract and retain the best people to Yorkshire’s leading independent garden centre. Here’s the e learning story from their website..
We have partnered with world leading e-learning provider SAP Litmos to provide a wealth of learning and development opportunities to support our growing team.
Our Head of People and Culture, Neil Barwise-Carr and his colleague, Becki Smith will be working with managers to identify courses and pathways appropriate to individuals and teams, with a view to upskilling team members in areas including customer services, IT, safeguarding and food safety.
“The Litmos e learning initiative is an engaging, extensive and accessible online learning platform that colleagues in all departments will be able to use to build both core skills for their current roles and additional skills for future development,” said Neil.
“We have access to hundreds of modules, from diversity and inclusion, conflict management, sustainability through to IT, finance, communication and marketing skills, that we can tailor to the team, from new starters to experienced team members.
“The Litmos programme forms part of our blended learning approach and facilitates customised learning paths for all team members.”
In addition to the e learning initiative, the People and Culture team at Tong Garden Centre have also introduced additional paid breaks for team members working longer days, morning huddles, birthday tea and cake and social and fundraising events.
“The raft of initiatives that Neil and Becki have introduced have significantly enhanced motivation and engagement within the team. This has been verified with a 385% increase in our Net Promoter Score since we introduced it six months ago, which is a fantastic result,” said our MD, Mark Farnsworth.
The Net Promotor Score helps to measure employee engagement and to determine what is important to the team. You can score anything from -100 to +100, with anything between +10 and +40 deemed to be a good result. In their first survey, Tong achieved a result of +14 in its first assessment in January 2020
Pictured are L-R Neil Barwise-Carr, Becki Smith and e learner, Dylan Carroll from Tong Garden Centre