At our bakeries, we are very passionate and committed to training all of our staff in the many aspects required to run a successful business.  This applies equally to new staff that needs to be trained before they start work, but also to existing staff, who need ongoing training to ensure their skills are up to date, refreshed so they remain at a high level and they are able to learn new skills. Our philosophy is to hire for attitude and train for skills.

We provide a combination of on the job training as well as classroom training.  On the job training is essential so staff can learn as they work, get their hands dirty and have a go at new things whilst being buddied with a trained employee.  We have internal trainers who do a lot of this training but we also rely on all of our staff to help each other out on an ongoing basis.

Sometimes though, we need to get staff away from the job so they can learn in a practice environment without interruptions.  We often run these sessions ourselves, but we also use outside companies to train our staff in specific skills that we don’t have, including customer service, management skills, communication, computers and many more.

One area we have to constantly work at is delivering excellent customer service to our many customers, every time they walk into our bakeries.  Our goal is to have all customers leave the bakery with a smile on their face; if they do they are very likely to come back.  To achieve this goal we train all of our staff, when serving customers to follow the Beechworth Bakery Customer Service Standard.

We use an outside company, Productivity Increase Group (PIG), to provide this specific customer service training.  They train all of our staff as well as training our trainers in specific coaching skills enabling them to follow up with the staff back on the job.  This ensures there is transfer of the learning from the training course to the job and existing staff maintain a high level of customer service on an ongoing basis.

PIG has been working with us for the last 10 years and Tom O’Toole recently said
the following ….

“We do get outside trainers, as often we are too close to the action.  This training group, Productivity Increase Group (PIG), they are all about customer service, that’s how we increase our sales and our productivity by customer service.

This group has one of the best customer service programs I’ve ever seen.  These guys get behind the counter, they find out what we sell and how we do it.  They come in and give us a whole new dimension on customer service and we love it.

Our staff love coming to these training courses, they love it.  Whether you are selling, donuts, washing machines or cars, this is an incredible customer service program, the best I’ve ever seen”.

If you would like to know more about what PIG could do for you, contact Roger Simpson on 0417 056 589 or check out their website on www.productivityincreasegroup.com.au