Farm Direct is a large regional shopper\'s club type store that specializes in p
ID: 366291 • Letter: F
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Farm Direct is a large regional shopper's club type store that specializes in providing farm fresh produce to customers. Over the past 20 years, the company has grown to a four store operation in a three state area in the western U.S. The company's appeal to customers stems from its ability to partner directly with supplier farms to provide quality products at lower prices. Customers pay an annual membership fee iin order to take advantage of savings while obtaining the very freshest products Jenny Hill, Big Box's VP of Operations, said, "The decline we have seen in business has been gradual over the last several years. The timing of the decline seems to correspond with changes in direction of the company. The changes at our corporate headquarters lead to changes in leadership at our stores. We began losing suppliers and saw declines in customer memberships." However, said Hill, "We are committed to our mission of being a one-stop-shop for the customers' culinary needs." Having worked at Farm Direct for ten years, Hill knows that the operation can be successful and profitable. As Hill explained, "The addition of our last store and the churn of management seem to have been too much for our organization to absorb." Communication between entities is at an all-time low and we seem to lose suppliers when their contracts expire. Our selection of products is dwindling right along with our customer base Our customers have come to trust the quality of the products we provide; however, unless our buyers are able to build business relationships with the suppliers, we can't be successful. To make matters worse, employee turnover is at record levels. Hill is also concerned about how sagging morale among may influence an increase in complaints from customers who do keep their memberships Hill has contacted YOU, an expert trainer to help address the situation in the company. Utilizing the ADDIE model, describe how you would plan, develop, deliver, and evaluate a training program at Farm Direct by answering the following questions 1. How would you proceed with the training process? Describe how you would determine the need for training at Farm Direct. (2 points) 2. What 4 techniques would you use to collect data to help you understand the situation at Farm Direct? (1 point) 3. What kinds of data would you collect and why? (2 points) 4. Needs assessments have traditionally been classified as focusing at two levels of analysis. Name the two levels of analysis that would help you determine performance improvement needs at Farm Direct. (1 point) 5. How would you analyze the information collected to help you understand the situation? (2 points) 6. What need(s) would be considered non-training needs in this example? (1 point)Explanation / Answer
ADDIE model is a framework used to design training programs. ADDIE stands for following:
A - Analysis of training needs and requirements. This phase tries to understand who are the learners, what is the learning environment, what is the current behaviour and what should be the target behaviour post training etc. All questions which help understand the training requirements are mentioned under Analysis phase.
D - Design phase involves designing of course content, material preparation and other aspects of the program, evaluating assesment objectives, training tools and other media which will help in delivering of the content.
D - Development phase deals with developing the content in line with the design document. If its an online training, the developer will code the training content, designer will create the story board and tester will look for bugs.
I - Implementation phase involves trainers or facilitators going over the designed curriculum in detail with the learners. All course material along with tools are used by the facilitators an learners are trained on them. Implementation phase also includes the Evaluation phase.
E - Evaluation phase is where the efficacy of the course content and the trainers are measured and evaluated.
Q1) This question deals with the Analysis phase as we need to determine the training needs at Farm Direct. To start with the training process, we first need to determine who are the intended group of learners at Farm Direct which need training. Post identification of key groups, it needs to be determined what would be the learning requirements. For e.g. one of the key learner group could be Buyers who are procuring stuff for Farm Direct. Learning requirements of Buyers could be determined by looking at problem areas like inability to renew contract with suppliers at expiry term, not able to retain good suppliers etc. Learning requirements could also be found by talking to the the learning group members and understanding what skills they lack which prevents them in doing their job effectively.
Q2) Data collection is an important part of understanding the real requirement and pain points. Following techniques could be used to collect data:
a) Interviews
b) Surveys
c) Existing reports
d) Observations
Q3) To evaluate the training requirements at Farm Direct, one should immediately look at MIS reports which report performance on critical functions. Data points like feedback calls, complaints also provide critical insight into what is going wrong at what place. Collection of this data is critical as identification of correct pain area will result in creation of better training program which can acutally help in resolving the issue.
Q4) Need analysis could be done at Organizational and Occupational levels. Undertaking need analysis at these two levels would identify requirements which would help improve performance both at Organizational level as well as Occupational level.
Q5) Collected information could be analyzed at above mentioned 2 levels of Organizational and Occupational to understand the situation better. For e.g. if one collects information about customer complaints or interviews existing as well as prospective customers to understand the reason behind declining membership and uses the information to identify training need areas at both organization level (for e.g. as an organization Farm Direct needs to re-brand itself as a lifestyle store instead of just plain old store which gets you fresh produce at a lower cost) and at occupational level (for e.g. marketing or customer relation team could need training in new ways of marketing like digital marketing which could increase reach to new tech savvy customers).
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