Making time for staff training

Haslemere Travel:
Setting a slot

At Haslemere Travel in Surrey, managing director Gemma Antrobus operates a slick system when it comes to supplier training.

“When I joined the agency 10 years ago, there was a slot on Thursday mornings from 9-10am when the office was closed to customers and we had a weekly catch-up,” she says.

While it was useful to have face-to-face time regularly, Antrobus explains that as a small company who shared a lot in the office day to day, they decided it wasn’t necessary on a weekly basis.

At the time, different supplier reps would pop in and they would approach their visits in different ways, some of which could be loud and disruptive.

“We sell luxury holidays and we’d have clients trying to spend tens of thousands of pounds and there would be a supplier shouting away behind them. The client experience always comes first,” Antrobus asserts.

This led to a decision to hand over three of the weekly staff meeting slots to suppliers.

“I’m now booking for February [next year],” she reveals. “We put an embargo on January but book all through December. I’ve only ever had one supplier be funny about it.”

She explains that during these slots, suppliers have the full attention of staff.

“The office is shut, the phones are off and it’s less about a presentation, more about a conversation. Sometimes for a tourist board, we’ll put out a big map on the floor and talk journeys and destinations, and the staff can ask all the questions they want.”

These sessions are for the agency’s in-branch staff, but they also host quarterly training sessions when all the homeworkers join too.

“These are just for our top suppliers – it’s usually a tour operator and a couple of hotels they sell. We close the office at 4.30pm and do a session until 6.30pm or 7pm and then go for dinner,” she says, adding that at Christmas, dinner is extra fun with secret Santa and other festive activities too.

Antrobus says she often finds the suppliers that come in to deliver training tend to get more focus in the following weeks.

“It’s those little nuggets of information you get, for example, if you hear about a water taxi between ‘A’ and ‘Z’ that runs at specific times each evening.”

And it’s rare that she says no to anyone approaching her for a slot.

“With tour operators, we rarely have anyone that contacts us that I don’t think we can work with. I just don’t know what they might have and with slots being planned six months ahead, I might need their product in six months’ time.”

Antrobus’s top three tips:
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Put aside the time in a private setting – it’s important that suppliers who spend money putting people on the road for us get the respect they deserve in return.
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Start with a slot once a month and approach your top suppliers to fill them – those you know will help you to make it work.

Be bold enough to say “this is my slot and this is how it works for my business” – 99.9% of people will understand that.