Enhancing Skills and Knowledge Through Training and Development Opportunities

Edcon, the business consortium that owns the Edgars, Jet, CNA and Red Square brands, is a well-established and successful company with an assured future. Right? Wrong! Even before the nationwide lockdown, Edcon was already experiencing problems. However, this unexpected consequence of the pandemic sealed its fate when overwhelming financial difficulties forced it to find buyers for the more profitable Jet and Edgars stores. Perhaps more attention to training and development could have helped Edcon deal more effectively with such unexpected market changes.

The primary aim is to leverage educational resources and other facilities that advance employee knowledge, extend their skill sets and generate a supportive and motivational work culture in which they will be better positioned to optimise job performance.

The Focus of Training and Development Programmes

Suitable training programs can be purchased online, created from scratch or with an automated cloud-based or in-house learning management system (LMS). Whichever method you choose, their primary objective is to meet specific organisational requirements, such as team building, learning to resolve or mediate in conflict situations and managing change or employee performance.

These and other educational and developmental services are all available to South African businesses from Orgro, an established leader in the field of organisational development. This article will now explore the related services provided by our sister company, Wegro.

The Level 2 B-BBEE company offers a range of training and development initiatives designed to uplift, upskill and empower South Africans, enabling them to overcome our nation’s socioeconomic challenges and achieve their full potential in the workplace. To those ends, Wegro offers learners the option of an accredited training course registered with the Quality Council for Trades & Occupations (QCTO) or a selection of unique bespoke programmes as follows:

• QCTO-accredited sales and customer service training:

Those attending this course may do so on a full- or part-time basis. The content is designed to help sales teams meet and exceed their company’s sales objectives by instructing them on the skills and core competencies essential for successful selling, forging, and maintaining positive client relationships through a sound understanding of effective customer support strategies.

The current bespoke options from Wegro also include a customer service training course and offer learners additional training and development programmes to address the following:

• Conflict: Conflicts within a team are a common occurrence, but these must be resolved to ensure it remains cohesive, efficient, and able to realise its full potential and achieve its shared goals. This course teaches learners how to recognise the underlying causes of conflict, mediate, and restore harmony.

• Leadership: Some are born leaders, others must be trained. Our Thrive Leadership Training Programme is designed to help attendees identify and hone the essential abilities and qualities of an effective leader, such as empathy, effective communication, transparency and accountability, and how to foster these in others.

• Management: This course focuses on the middle management level and consists of four modules addressing the essential requirements of an effective manager as follows:

• Self-awareness
• People insights
• Managing people
• Diversity and inclusion

Like all Wegro training and development programmes, our management course is conducted by industry experts.

• Performance: Our performance management training adopts a practical approach aimed at boosting your organisation’s performance and the step-by-step process of managing it effectively. It covers everything, from establishing Key Performance Areas (KPAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and holding casual team discussions and formal performance appraisals to ways to motivate a team and handle any performance issues that may arise.

• People dynamics: Whether a business deals directly with clients or not, its smooth operation will involve equally smooth interactions between its employees and managers. The People Dynamics Programme is a Wegro initiative whose goal is to identify and foster the skills necessary for an organisation to optimise the quality of its interactions with colleagues, managers, and clients.

Access These and Other Training and Development Opportunities at Orgro

Farmers grow crops; we grow people. To achieve this, we offer an extensive selection of services, including psychometric evaluations. While the latter are widely used to assess job applicants, they are also a means to identify staff who might benefit from the training and development courses outlined above.

If you believe your business could do better but are unsure how to achieve this, why not contact an organisational development specialist at Orgro?