A major IT skills upgrade involving about 500 people, from clerks to executives, at liquor giant Distillers Corporation Ltd`s offices across the country has been successfully undertaken inhouse by JSE-listed CS Holdings through its subsidiary CS Education Solutions.
The staff have been trained on MS Office packages at Green Park, Epping and Wadeville and at the Bergkelder cellars in the Western Cape. Distillers Corporation is SA`s leading marketer of branded alcoholic beverages which include Meerlust, Neethlingshof and Allesverloren wines, JC le Roux sparkling wines, Klipdrift and Oude Meester brandies, Gordon`s Dry Gin and Amarula Cream Liqueur.
The company`s IT training co-ordinator, Riaan Carstens, says Distillers renews its training contracts every year and about a dozen companies were assessed before CS Education Solutions was chosen.
"IT skills are an essential part of an employee`s value to an employer and must be upgraded regularly to keep up with new versions of applications.
We constantly assess the training needs of all our PC users to ensure that every one can do his or her job efficiently. The PC skills needed by each staff member change with their roles in the organisation so we continually evaluate the individual`s role and tailor courses to match," says Carstens.
Distillers has established that refresher courses are as important for infrequent users of a PC as they are to keep "power-users" up to speed. "Without refresher courses they are hampered in their pursuit of excellence," Carstens asserts.
CS Education Solutions customised a pre-training needs analysis specifically to Distillers` requirements. Other benefits in the deal were free onsite retraining; telephone support for all staff - not just those who had been trained - and customised manuals.
Feature-based IT applications training is not enough to make staff more productive, Carstens believes. "The requirement today is for training to show a return on investment. Although there is no single solution to measure the effect of training on a company`s performance, we constantly measure performance at various levels in the company.
"We constantly evaluate the training people receive by interviewing them and their managers to see if they are working faster or more effectively and are always looking for ways to fine-tune courses"
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