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SME Case Studies
SME Case Study 1 Protectagroup 19th April 2004
Protectagroup invests in £60,000 training contract
Protectagroup, one of Wales' leading insurance brokers, has appointed Acorn Learning & Development to assist and work alongside their internal training department in providing a comprehensive training and development programme to its staff in a contract worth £60,000 a year.
The contract, which looks set to run over several years, will provide Protectagroup with additional vocational training for 145 members of staff in its 15 branches across South Wales, including its head office in Williamstown in the Rhondda, with the aim of helping staff development and offering even higher levels of customer service across the group.
The training programme will include NVQ qualifications individually designed to specific job roles within the company as well as learning from observation and on-the-job training being coached and supervised.
To date, Protectagroup has already spent £200,000 on training and development since its launch 13 years ago and, as a result, the company now enjoys a minimum of 80 per cent employee retention rate.
However, with further expansion in the pipeline and the forthcoming FSA regulation, Protectagroup was keen to invest even further in its training and development schemes and is looking forward to their continuing success.
"The programme we have put together with Acorn is designed to suit each individual member of staff," said Paul Ragan, managing director at Protectagroup. "We wanted their studies to be shaped around the work they do on a daily basis and their individual needs rather than adopting a standard course for everyone providing our employees with a recognised qualification on its completion.
"As part of their training, they'll be updated on any policy changes within the company and will make regular day visits on occasions to different branches across South Wales to observe others. They will also spend time at our new state-of-the-art training facility as part of their tailored NVQ level training in areas such as general insurance, management, customer service, team leading and administration.
"Altogether, staff will have eight hours of training per month with Acorn, in addition to on-going internal operations and systems training conducted by our experienced training department based at our headquarters. In fact, the training programme has proved to be such a success that we are now looking into opening an additional training school at the site in the near future.
"Training really is key to Protectagroup's continuing success. The investment we have made to date has already had a significant impact on turnover as we are enjoying even higher levels of customer retention, thanks to increased customer care and service quality. It's hoped that this will continue with this extra investment."
Helena Williams, Corporate Development Director at Acorn Learning & Development, said: "The exceptional level of commitment to training and development shown by Protectagroup is very encouraging.
"Each and every employee within the business now has access to formalised training or nationally recognised qualifications and by combining this with the already excellent levels of customer service, we believe Protectagroup will be in a strong position to grow its market share significantly over the next few years."
Protectagroup offers a range of personal and commercial insurance policies as well as a claims facility for personal injury and uninsured loss.
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