Company: DHL Aviation (UK) Ltd, part of the Deutsche Post World Net Group
No of employees: 800 (UK)
Core area of business: Freight Forwarding
The Business Challenge
In an industry where customer is king, DHL Aviation, like many other freight logistics organisations, is constantly looking for ways to improve its offering to its customers by finding new ways of being competitive.
At the same time the organisation is keen to attract, retain and develop its workforce, recognising the links between a happy workforce and a healthy and successful business. The senior management team began looking at the following key areas to help improve business performance:-
The Solution
To help attract, retain and train employees it was identified that improved levels of literacy and numeracy(Skills for Life) would be beneficial in all these areas, and DHL Aviation decided that the best approach for the business would be to fully integrate key skills into the workplace. They came up with a strategy to improve basic skills across the organisation which covers English – defined as speaking and listening,
reading and writing, and Maths – defined as numbers, measures, shapes and space, and handling data.
The numeracy and literacy requirements of all job roles were identified and mapped to the relevant areas of the adult education curriculum. This process helped to highlight exactly what skills were required for each role and enabled tailored training plans to be developed for each employee. The training was then delivered through a combination of on and off-site facilities with employers given paid time off to learn, and was supported by a network of Workplace learning champions.
The Results
- Employees have fully bought into the programme and are now asking to be assessed with regular sessions scheduled. Over 700 assessments have been carried out since its launch in September 2006
- The accident rate amongst learners is 50% lower than the Company average
- Employee turnover has fallen significantly – it is now at 4.47% (the lowest figure in 8 years) a 68% year on year reduction.
- The absenteeism rate amongst learners is 0.86%, the Company average is 5.3% representing an annual saving of £120,000
- Employees are more satisfied working for DHL - a recent employee survey resulted in 109% increase in satisfaction
- Supervisors are championing employee development – the employee survey indicates that this is by 57%
Since the launch of the basic skills programme productivity has increased by 12%
- The programme is fully embedded within the organisation and continues to deliver successful results
