POL00039749
POL00039749
a
4
Ne
To: RGMs ot From:-- — Bruce McNiven
ec. J Main
RLMs —
T Rollason . Date: 7 January 1999
Re: © Horizon Training
Training courses for 64,000 of the 72,000 target audience have been agreed in
principle. This includes the Managers Course which will be aimed at branch
managers and subpostmasters, together with other staff who complete the Cash
Account; and the basic training course for sub office assistants. Currently however
we have not reached agreement on how to deliver training to an estimated audience
of approx. 8,000 comprising at least 6,500 counter clerks.and upwards of 1600
franchise staff who operate ECCO +.
Clearly, the training is not aimed at teaching people how to complete a Cash Account
which is an assumed competence of those attending the courses, but the conversion
to the automated version is more complex than originally envisaged. The gap is
approximately two hours of training which cannot be added to the one day event.
The design of the courses is modular and because of this, it would be possible to take
some elements of the training out of the standard day. The two prime contenders for
this are either the Stock Unit Balancing module itself or the Benefit Encashment
module which trains people in the basics of the card payment. Alternatively, it
would be possible to send the audience of 8,000 on the managers course but this
carries other attendant issues.
Weare currently looking at four options, all of which have varying degrees of
operational impact. These are;
Option1 Attendance of the 8,000 stock unit holders at the 1.5 days Managers
Course.
This proposal exceeds our requirement but it will obviously provide
POCL with better trained staff at our main outlets. It also provides
clean training insomuch as all the outlets will have completed training
within the five day training window. Operationally, however, there
may be difficulties in releasing staff or having sufficient staff to backfill
absences. Impact on customer service for that week will be an issue.
The backfill costs are covered in the Horizon training budget for the
provision of a one day course but there is no current provision for an
additional days attendance. This cost is estimated as £325k.
POL00039749
POL00039749
Option2 . The 8,000 individuals would attend a one day course which would
include Stock Unit Balancing but not the card payment modules. The
proposal to deliver this module would be to use CTOs ona Sunday and
carryout the training using POCL trainers. There is effectively a four
week window between an office going live and the first impact of card
payments when this training could be completed. The estimated cost of
this option is £1m.
Option3 = As above but with staff being released during office hours to attend
their training at a local CTO, again delivered by POCL trainers. The
estimated cost of this option is £270k.
Option4 —_ To provide a POCL trainer in the office and deliver on-site training.
: This option is more cost effective but also more time consuming as staff
are released in small batches from the counter. The cost of this option
would be the dedicated trainer time of £250k.
It may well prove that no single solution is appropriate and that there would have to
be a mix and match requirement, dependent on local circumstances but this would
. make the logistics complex.
It is important this issue is brought to a conclusion before the end of January. We are
in discussion at the moment with Pathway about the commercial agreements which
would provide the financial headroom for any of these solutions. However, in order
to plan successfully for delivery, we need to define our preferred approach.
I would like a response based on operational impacts, by Friday 15 January. These
are clearly complex issues and although RLMs are reasonably up to speed on the
implications, we are arranging a meeting for them to bring them completely up to
speed in order to support regional discussions.
Regards
Bruce McNiven
WORD\Horizon\ Hortz0n Tratning doe