Stories of Success -
Student of the Year 2010
If the value of training ever needed proving Alistair Bruce, Learning and Development Partner at Cineworld, has given a brilliant demonstration. Not only has he gained the CIPD Certificate of Training Practice with Distinction, winning Cullen Scholefield’s Student of the Year Award on the way, but in his studies he designed a new Staff Induction Programme for Cineworld - now adopted across all their 78 cinemas.
Alistair joined Cineworld in 2000 and became a Deputy General Manager before deciding to widen his experience by moving into a training role. He’s in charge of training in 21 cinemas in a geographical area from Hull down to Jersey.
He started his course in late 2008 and finished at Easter 2010. The course included ten tutorials as well as working through online material. Where possible, Alistair applied the skills he was adding in his everyday work.
His Integrated Project was written on designing an induction process for the company’s customer facing staff such as ticket sales, cleaning, or retailing. Before he started on his project, induction was carried out by individual cinemas, leading to an inconsistent and unstructured approach to welcoming and introducing new people. He decided that focus groups would be the best way to identify a new model as this approach would ensure commitment to the new programme. He designed all the course material as well as a Manager’s Guide to the training and the package was so good that it’s now being applied right across the group.
“To get a Distinction was great but to win the Cullen Scholefield award as well was the icing on the cake,” says Alistair. “I learned a lot on the course but it gave me the incentive to do some creative thinking which not only helped to cement what I was learning but almost more importantly has developed a really improved induction process across my company. I’m very proud of that.”
“Les Jones at Cullen Scholefield was my tutor – and was always there when I needed him but they have a policy of letting each student work in a way that’s best for them; it’s not intrusive but means I know I can get support if I wanted it.”
Stuart Holdsworth, National Head of Learning and Development for Cineworld, and Alistair’s boss, says: “When you’re dealing with very large teams as we do, the strategic benefit of the course is that it gets you to look at things from a totally different viewpoint. The course can really help to build into our training programmes solutions required for different people, making sure that we get the message across to the teams on the ground. We are so proud of Alistair’s phenomenal achievement; to have excelled to such a level is a just reward for his commitment and hard work”
Cullen Scholefield’s Managing Director, Maureen Scholefield, is delighted with another star pupil. “It’s a brilliant performance by Alistair. He fully deserves all the plaudits – he took a very determined academic approach to his studies and his project was an example of just what can be achieved with effective training.”
