Team players show the right Spirit

Citation

(2004), "Team players show the right Spirit", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 36 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2004.03736bab.004

Team players show the right Spirit

Team players show the right Spirit

A company that operates 1,070 pubs, restaurants, bars, hotels and nightclubs has devised a training initiative designed to provide its outlets with "the very best team players".

The programme, named "Players", has won the Spirit Group Ltd, of Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, a West Midlands regional award in the latest UK National Training Awards.

Players involves 156 learning activities, each featured on a separate card and housed in an activity centre, a central point for storing all the cards in the outlets. So far, 25,000 staff – now known as "team players" – have experienced the training.

Jayne Mee, Spirit's director of organization development, said: "Players is becoming a way of life."

Players aims to improve retail-employee performance through the development of skills, knowledge and behaviour. It is based on the 4Ps – people, products, processes and presentation. It is also based on four competence levels for each group of staff – bar, waiting, kitchen, reception, room service, Wacky Warehouse (which are children's play barns) and cleaning.

The competence levels are: new faces, who understand the fundamentals; rising stars, who can work to minimum standards required by their role; stars, who have mastered their role and can coach or supervise tasks; and super stars, who regularly supervise and can deputise for the manager.

Learning is self-managed with some coaching and requires minimal reading but maximum interaction with other team members.

Apart from the activity cards, Players is delivered with a handbook that includes a route map to show each team player his or her career progression and record progress. The system includes: a manager's guide to help them to manage the programme; a coaching handbook with coaching tips for each activity; a summary of competencies for each level by job; a poster to let teams track their progress; and certificates to recognize achievement.

Players was delivered to all outlets within eight days. "Almost overnight, roughly 15,000 team players began training on the new programme," said Jayne Mee.

The programme has brought higher levels of customer service and satisfaction. Outlets can now match competencies to key trading periods, by using only stars and super stars on the busiest nights. And staff are more productive quicker – usually after five weeks instead of 13 weeks.