1. Product quality – one step away from brand damage and reduced sales

Product quality issues can have a massive impact on complaints and sales. For instance, the popularity of social media means that one complaint can be shared with many thousands of consumers, which can significantly increase the brand damage. Achieving consistent product quality really relies on a team effort, which means everyone playing their part.

Project brief:

Produce a training solution for the UK’s largest branded foods producer to firstly, improve Front Line Managers understanding of what quality is, secondly, how their actions can impact it and finally, what they can do to help to reduce customer complaints and therefore improve product quality.

Key objectives:

• Improve product quality
• Reduce complaints
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Improve operator awareness of quality
• A clear understanding of how to prevent incidents and how to react if they do happen

You [the operator] can have the single biggest impact on raising the bar in terms of our quality level, the single biggest impact as a group of anybody in the company.”

Company CEO

Solution:

• We worked with the manufacturer to produce a scenario-based workshop incorporating two bespoke workbooks focusing on customer complaints and incident management
• We designed a complaint scenario based on a failed quality check. This showed operators how quickly a complaint can result in large scale product recalls, brand damage and ultimately lost sales.

Results after 6 months

• Complaints are down already 6 months into the program
• FLMs are much more aware of quality issues
• FLMs are reacting to quality issues much quicker and preventing poorer quality stock from getting to market
• The effectiveness of incident management has improved
• A 1.5hr workshop has been developed and rolled out to all operatives, further increasing the message and improving quality

2. Level 3 Food Safety – is a relevant business focus being missed?

Food safety is a challenging topic. A generic Level 3 Food Safety course may get the key points about general food safety across, however, it does not always relate back to that delegate day-to-day job. Every kitchen is different.  A bespoke course improves overall competency, by focusing on the specific food safety controls within that business. Therefore ensuring employees have a very clear understanding of how to manage and improve food safety when they get back to their kitchen.

Project brief:

Produce a tailored training solution to provide relevant knowledge and understanding of food safety principles and controls within care homes at Level 3 Supervising Food Safety standard.

Key objectives:

• Focus on the care home’s key practices and policies to ensure knowledge of best practice
• Concentrate on controls that the Chef Managers were responsible for, thereby removing sections such as kitchen design which they did not manage
• Emphasise the importance of Chef Manager’s role in implementing and improving food safety controls
• Cost and time savings
• Standard of tutoring to stay consistent

Solution

• We produced a bespoke training course focusing on providing specific knowledge and understanding of food safety and controls used within the care homes
• We tailor-made an examination to pick out the salient points of the course, which, in turn, removed costs associated with an external exam board
• The length of the course was reduced by focusing on just the specific care home food safety controls.  The course is now 2 days instead of 3, this reduced the course cost, such as tuition costs and time out of the business for the Chef Managers.

“It was very thorough & I have learnt things that are relevant to my role at [Care Home].” Chef Manager – May’17

“It refreshed my knowledge but also gave me the information on how [Care Home] run their kitchens” Chef Manager – Feb’16

“The course has now been tailored to [Care Home] and seems much more relevant and not so intense as before but still delivering enough information” Chef Manager – Nov’15

Results after 2.5 years

• Pass rate has improved by 3.5%, distinctions have improved by 0.6%
• Direct cost savings of £75 per delegate enabling 38 more delegates to be trained for the same budget. Plus indirect savings of delegates being out of the business for one less day.
• 53% more delegates have been trained since the change, when compared with the previous 2 years.