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16
People
In today’s highly competitive home
improvement marketplace a good
experience in-store can play a vital
role in building customer loyalty.
Last year Kingfi sher’s businesses continued to provide tailored training
to the people who are in the front line of delivering customer satisfaction
– our store teams. These programmes took a number of different
guises across the world but all shared the common goal of improving
the service we provide.
B&Q’s ‘friendly experts’ build customer confi dence
In March 2009, B&Q UK began a national roll out of two vocational
training programmes it launched in pilot form the previous year.
Both programmes offer qualifi cations backed by City & Guilds, the
UK’s foremost vocational awarding body. The fi rst, the NVQ (National
Vocational Qualifi cation) Retail Skills Level 2, has now been achieved
by 10,000 customer advisers. The second, which is the UK’s fi rst fullyaccredited
Home Improvement Knowledge Qualifi cation, has courses
tailored to decorating, gardening, building and room solutions. Some
5,500 employees had achieved this qualifi cation by year-end.
Last year also saw 120 B&Q staff – ranging in age from 18 to 70 –
begin their Retail Apprenticeship. This is a new City & Guilds-accredited
programme which brings together six nationally-recognised qualifi cations
and is designed to fast track high potential employees towards more
senior positions within the Company.
In September 2009 B&Q launched its Showroom Academy, aimed at
employees who work with customers seeking complete room solutions.
The Academy offers a range of courses focusing on product knowledge
and selling skills, with more than 10,500 places taken during the
programme’s fi rst three months of operation – a ratio of just under
three courses for every member of the showroom team.
Training underpins B&Q China transformation
B&Q China recognises the vital role its store staff will play in the drive
back to profi tability. As stores are revamped and the customer interface
shifts from vendor representatives to B&Q’s own staff, a series of
bespoke training programmes have been implemented to help store
teams to grow into their new roles.
01
Kingfi sher plc
Annual Report
and Accounts
2009/10
A total of 72 one-day product knowledge workshops were held in
stores during the year. In addition more than 2,500 product knowledge
workbooks have been distributed to customer advisers. Each 50-page
workbook is tailored to a different category, with kitchen, bathroom,
paint & decorative, tiling, fl ooring and building covered so far and more
to follow throughout 2010. After completing the workbook employees
must sit an exam to test their understanding of it, with the fi rst of these
exams taking place from March 2010. B&Q China has also developed
its own 5-Step Selling training course, which has already been delivered
to almost 2,000 customer advisers.
The training focus has not been confi ned to the shop fl oor, however:
more than 160 managers have received training in the core principles of
project management, while members of the product buying team have
attended bespoke range architecture and category management training
as well as getting the opportunity to improve their negotiating skills.
French businesses underline commitment to training
Employees at our two French businesses, Castorama and Brico Dépôt,
have participated in a broad range of learning and development
programmes. At Castorama, almost 8,800 members of staff have
now taken part in half-day customer service workshops entitled Client
Attitude, while around 4,000 took advantage of e-learning courses
focusing on areas such as product knowledge and selling techniques.
Meanwhile Brico Dépôt continued to roll out its established vocational
training programmes, with more than 8,000 employees receiving
training in areas such as marketing, IT/systems and management skills
throughout the year.
Gallup engagement survey gains traction
Two years ago Kingfi sher rolled out the Gallup Q12 survey – a globallyrecognised
means of measuring employee engagement – to more
than 1,300 leaders across the Group. In 2009/10 we began to see
the survey’s initial results being used to create targeted programmes
to boost engagement. The effects of these initiatives could be seen in
the fi nal survey of last year, which saw our GrandMean score for the
leadership population (the biggest indicator of engagement levels) reach
4.23. This is defi ned as a ‘statistically signifi cant increase’ of 0.28 on
the fi nal 2008/09 survey of the leadership population when measured
on a like-for-like basis.
Last year also saw B&Q UK, which pioneered the Q12 process within
Kingfi sher, record its highest-ever GrandMean of 4.26, a fi gure that
Gallup considers ‘world class’.
01 City & Guilds
training at B&Q UK
Molly Motsi, from
B&Q’s Enfi eld store,
achieved her City &
Guilds qualifi cation
in January, one of over
15,000 staff to achieve
this accreditation