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Post Office - Europe's largest IT project to serve 28 million weekly customers
Client Background
The Post Office 'Horizon' project was one of Europe's largest IT projects, to automate 18,000 Post Office branches across the UK. This £1 billion project enabled the Post Office to provide a wide range of standardised, automated services from stamp purchases and television licences to bill payment and banking, to their 28 million weekly customers. On completion of the programme in 2001, the Post Office owns one of Europe's largest and most secure retail and banking networks.
Training on the effective use of the new touchscreen automated system was vital to ensure Post Office staff use the automated services fully and correctly. Don Grey, Horizon National Roll Out Project Manager at the Post Office explained: "Efficient and effective customer service is a business critical factor for the Post Office and therefore staff being able to use the new Horizon system competently and rapidly was vital to us. Training was a key ingredient to the overall success of the project … we needed a reliable training provider with experience of delivering large and logistically complex training programmes. The 63,000 Post Office employees had to receive the same course content and a consistent level of teaching. This was a mammoth task for any training company."
KnowledgePool's Approach
With its experience of other large training projects, KnowledgePool was contracted to deliver the training for the Post Office project and conducted a lengthy training needs analysis as part of its initial bid. Post Office employees trained ranged from 17 to 87 years old and some had never used a computer before, whereas others were already familiar with automated processes in Post Office branches.
Due to the sheer scale of the project, KnowledgePool created a dedicated administration centre and developed a training administration system to process the logistical information. The system recorded training data for each Post Office employee, determined the course(s) each employee would attend (dependant upon their location and role) and offered alternative dates if they could not make a particular course. KnowledgePool staff answered queries, rescheduled courses and also issued certificates to Post Office employees who had successfully completed the training.
Several months before the first training courses, KnowledgePool recruited a team of 200 experienced trainers. Each one completed a comprehensive skill-up on the current and new Post Office processes: all trainers had to pass compulsory exams before being allowed to deliver the training.
At the same time the trainers were being trained, three key criteria were devised for the Post Office employee training sessions:
- Employees must be trained within 15 miles of their place of work
- Employees must be trained less than 2 weeks prior to receiving the automated system at their place of work
- As far as possible, employees with disabilities should be integrated into the general training courses
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"Every week 300 Post Office branches came online and were able to operate effectively thanks to the training, helping the Post Office move a step further in its modernisation programme." Don Grey - Horizon National Roll Out Project Manager |
KnowledgePool staff inspected 15,000 potential venues from the Shetlands to the Scilly Isles and using the agreed criteria, 12,000 venues were chosen to be training centres. A survey was conducted via a questionnaire to assess the day-to-day roles of Post Office staff at each of its 18,000 outlets. Don Grey commented, "In a typical Post Office branch, 80% of the staff are part-time and move around and change jobs frequently. Therefore KnowledgePool checked all details twice, once when the training venues had been chosen to obtain the details of the staff to be trained, and a second time just before the training began to ensure that the information was still accurate."
Don Grey concluded, "The training on the new systems from KnowledgePool has been a great success. Every week 300 Post Office branches came online and were able to operate effectively thanks to the training, helping the Post Office move a step further in its modernisation programme. The company's [KnowledgePool's] experience in training large numbers of staff and its commitment to quality have shone through."
Fast Facts
- KnowledgePool trained over 63,000 Post Office employees
- KnowledgePool trainers visited all 18,000 Post Office branches to assess staff training needs
- 15,000 training venues all over the UK were inspected and 12,000 were chosen
- 210 KnowledgePool trainers were involved in the project
- On an average day, 125 trainers trained 250 Post Office employees
- Course appraisal feedback indicated 98.5% satisfaction rate
