Girlguiding UK’s Trading Services gives thumbs up to NVQs

Currently celebrating its centenary, Girlguiding UK is the UK’s largest organisation for girls and young women, with over 500,000 members. Girlguiding UK’s Trading Services, a division of the charity, operates a state-of-the-art warehouse that supplies over 800 volunteer-led depots. They also run six shops and fulfil customer orders for uniforms, equipment and publications via their website and catalogue. Based in Altrincham, the distribution and sales processing centre has recently started working with Intec Business Colleges to introduce NVQ training for its employees. Following the success of the pilot scheme, Trading Services is now considering rolling out further training in other areas of the organisation.

Four members of staff had been recently promoted into new roles within the warehouse and distribution side of the business and Martin Goodwin, Manager at the Trading Services, believed that NVQs would help the staff develop into their new positions. “Two members of staff have taken the Team Leader Level 2 qualification to support their roles and two others have taken a Level 2 NVQ in Storage and Warehousing. These qualifications are a great opportunity for us to provide support to our employees as they take on new roles and responsibilities,” said Martin.

This is the first time that Trading Services has undertaken any training of this nature. “The NVQs are challenging but they have helped our staff focus and develop. It has also given them confidence in their abilities and the realisation of the contribution that they make to the operation. Working with Intec has been great, from start to finish everything with the programme has ran smoothly and following feedback from those who have taken part in the pilot we are now looking into running the NVQ in Customer Services for our sales processing area,” concluded Martin.