Hallmark greets a new training provider

Citation

(2005), "Hallmark greets a new training provider", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 37 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2005.03737eab.001

Hallmark greets a new training provider

Training at every level is part of the ethos of Hallmark Cards Inc, the $4-billion-turnover company that produces greetings cards and gift wrappings in over 30 languages for markets in more than 100 countries.

The company’s Bradford-based UK and international headquarters has chosen the New Technology Institute (NTI) West Yorkshire to provide a digital combination of management and digital-skills training.

Hallmark employs more than 1,670 staff in Yorkshire alone. The Yorkshire operations include the biggest creative-design studio of its type in Britain. A calendar of training workshops is just one of the varied approaches the company adopts, along with targeted programmes for specific functional areas.

Andrew Wood, Hallmark learning and development manager, commented: “We place a great emphasis on ensuring that all development programmes reinforce and imbed our culture, values and styles. When we were researching various organizations to provide our high-performance management programme, NTI was both responsive to our requirements and flexible in adapting its offerings to our approach. In addition, the company was forthcoming with other suggestions for development initiatives it could help to support.

“The pilot was very well received by the 12 staff who underwent development and we are now planning to roll the programme out to at least 150 managers over an 18-month period. The course will help us to standardize our management approach within Hallmark and provide key insights into the role management plays within a progressive business environment.”

With its specialist knowledge of the digital industries, NTI West Yorkshire has also been able to cater for the company’s design-team requirements, providing Apple Mac OS X 10.3.5 training for Hallmark creatives in its core Hallmark and Tigerprint (Marks & Spencer product division) design studios.

The Apple course, offered in collaboration with Leeds-based Apple specialist Clockwork, with funding support from the local regional-development agency, caters for system administrators. It covers the implementation, maintenance and server fundamentals of the new Mac OS X system, which the combined 135-strong core Hallmark and Tigerprint teams are implementing.

Julie North, of senior artwork manager at Tigerprint, said: “I came away from the course having learned something valuable, something that I can put into practice at Tigerprint. As a team, we can now get the best out of our Macs through our greater understanding of how the whole system works. I can also offer better guidance for the studio and rectify any problems that may arise, without having to call a software or hardware engineer.”