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Great feedback at Glasgow Welcomes trainers’ workshop

02 May 2012

The fifth Glasgow Welcomes In-house Licensed Trainers Development Workshop, organised by Glasgow Service with Style, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Glasgow, last week. It offered the ideal platform for a group of enthusiastic licensed Glasgow Welcomes industry trainers to come together to discuss their experiences and to learn more about delivering the successful customer service excellence programme to their own staff.

To date, there are 32 In-House Licensed trainers, and it was clear from the feedback and conversations that the Glasgow Welcomes Service Excellence training courses have been well received in a wide range of work places.

Amongst the delegates were representatives from Cordia, the Glasgow Film Theatre, Radisson Blu, Glasgow Life, Cameron House on Loch Lomond, Glynhilll Hotel in Renfrew and City of Glasgow College.

The first half of the morning workshop was led by Mark Hutchison and Teresa MacPherson, of Glasgow Life, who had been invited to share their adaptation of the Glasgow Welcomes in-house training course to suit their own requirements and objectives.

Mark and Teresa are training advisors at Glasgow Life, which includes such services as leisure centres, museums and galleries in the city.

The staff across Glasgow Life are diverse and range from front-line employees at museums and sports centres to cleaners and also now the staff taking up positions at the new Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.

While Mark and Teresa have retained the true essence of the Glasgow Welcomes product, and utilised the key training messages and objectives, they decided to further develop the programme to suit their own needs.

Teresa also noted: “Many of our staff have been through numerous customer service training programmes. For some, there will be thoughts such as, ‘Oh no, not another staff training day.’ But we wanted to ensure that our new training programme was fresh, new, unique and highly relevant.”

“We wanted to make it fun, entertaining and something that would excite our staff,” added Mark.

Mark had spent time adapting the power point presentation. “I agree wholeheartedly with the aim of the Glasgow Welcomes training programme and all of the key messages" he said. “But I also wanted to make the presentation more customised and relevant to Glasgow Life. I have also made it more picture-led and there are extra elements to keep staff focused.”

Mark had clearly enjoyed re-designing the presentations and had cleverly included many "Glaswegian" images, such as Rab C Nesbitt to illustrate “human", a "four seasons in one day" photograph to illustrate “dramatic”, and a Scotch pie as a representation for a pie chart!

Mark and Teresa also decided to include some of the Glasgow Life company values, to underline to staff that the training is specific to their own brand identity and missions.

An accompanying booklet is used during the training sessions, but also acts as a reference guide after the course.

“Basically, we jazzed the whole presentation up," said Mark. “The core course is still there, because we recognise that Glasgow Welcomes brings a great deal to customer service staff training, but I also wanted to make it really fun for our staff.”

A pilot of the adapted Glasgow Life training course took place on February 29 – with the injection of a fun romantic element! – and was very well received by staff.

Teresa said: “The feedback was that everyone enjoyed the course and gained a lot from it. Even those that had arrived a bit jaded by the thought of ‘yet another’ staff training course left saying they had learned a great deal. We have been delighted by the response.”

Glasgow Life now plan to roll out the course to more staff. Frontline staff will be first, as well as management teams.

Teresa said: “The course isn’t mandatory because we believe that for staff to benefit they have to want to do the training. But we have been inundated with requests to run the course.

“We have a total of more than 3,500 staff and five licensed Glasgow Welcomes trainers so it will take time for everyone to take part in the training but we are working hard to meet demand.”

Feedback from other workshop delegates

All the delegates were impressed by the Glasgow Life adaptation of the Glasgow Welcomes training course. Judith Eck, of Glynhill Hotel, commented: “This makes me want to go away and make some more adaptations to our delivery of the course. I have already made a few changes here and there but the Glasgow Life presentation looks so smart and informative. I am really enthused by what I have seen.”

Judith has found that at her hotel it is easier to run the training day as two half day sessions. She said: “It is tough sometimes for staff to get away from their work for a whole day, so I have split the delivery of the course into two sessions.

“This has been well received and it allows staff to put into practice some of what they have learned between the sessions."

Ian Hunt, the lead trainer for Glasgow Welcomes, said: “It is fantastic to hear all the positive feedback from our delegates. The Glasgow Welcomes Customer Service Excellence programme is meant to be flexible, so that each business can adapt it to suit their own goals. We are delighted to see that Glasgow Life has stuck to the main objectives and key messages of the Glasgow Welcomes programme, but adapted it to suit their own staff needs.”

* The second half of the morning was led by Chris Marr, a social media expert who offered valuable advice about in-house use of social media for trainers. Look out for our next blog, which will offer lots of tips about social media for in-house trainers.