The Harding Group invests in new training centre

The Harding Group (THG), a leading merchandising, field marketing and sales company in the FMCG arena, has announced plans to complete a new and improved training centre at its head office in Gauteng, Isando.
The company aims to complete building of the training centre by September 2010.

Brad Harding, Managing Director of THG commented, “We provide local and international manufacturers the highest level of services when it comes to their trade marketing, field sales, merchandising and supply chain functions. To continue to provide this service with the volume of training days allocated to our extensive sales and field marketing force it made sense for us to gear up our internal training capability.”
THG has also recruited leading personnel with extensive industry experience to run the 500m2 training facility. “The training facility will be designed so that it can host up to 100 people either in a large group, or due to its modular design the room can be divided to allow for multiple, separate training rooms accommodating ten people at a time,” says Harding.
“94% of the costs of running an organisation like ours is spent on our people, it is important that we invest in staff to help them grow, keep motivated and have a stimulating time working for the company.”
The training centre provides the following courses and training: product training and announcements; Effective key account management; Field Marketing 1,2 and 3; Health and safety; HIV/Aids in the workplace; a variety of IT systems training courses and so on.

“We also provide executive team development and mentorship programmes which are being evolved to develop and upskill our growing middle management to senior management team,” added Harding. “Due to THG’s large field force a significant emphasis has been placed on train-the-trainer modules to ensure consistent national operating standards are implemented.” He emphasised that only part of the skills development done by THG is done in classroom training, a significant amount of modules are delivered in-store and within active working environments to ensure practical application of course material.