The Gift Wrap Company: That's a Wrap

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That's a Wrap
The Gift Wrap Company Prospers with Quick Start Training

Gift Wrap Company Catalog was the month before Christmas, and all through the plant, all the employees had gone to lunch… except Keven Rowley, senior lead mechanic, who was busy replacing a part on one of The Gift Wrap Company’s bow-making machines.

“Gotta get this thing running,” Rowley said, leaning forward and reaching into the gears of the bow-making machine. The months before Christmas are their busiest season and they can’t afford to have machinery off-line.

Rowley is one of the graduates from the Supervised On-the-Job Training (SOJT) classes that Quick Start had recently completed for the company. As a result of his experience with SOJT, Rowley has been able to train other employees at The Gift Wrap Company to cover tasks that he previously performed, freeing him up to concentrate on higher-level challenges like repairing a sensitive bow-making machine that the company can’t afford to let stand idle.

“It was quite useful,” Rowley said of the SOJT classes. “When you go through the four-step method of training somebody, you know that they know what to do. That experience has really helped me to be able to better help others.” (See sidebar for more information on Supervised On-the-Job Training.)

The Gift Wrap Company, located in Midway, Ga., just outside Savannah, is the oldest gift wrap manufacturer in the country, Photo of Betty Clapham and one of the nation’s major suppliers of wrapping paper, gift bags and other stationery items. The company’s products are sold in thousands of retail outlets, national chains, and independent card and gift shops.

The Gift Wrap Company’s growth and success led executives to move their facility from Massachusetts to Georgia and consolidate their operations in a 300,000-sq.-ft. plant which opened in 1996. Since that time, nearly 100% of The Gift Wrap Company’s 167 employees have been impacted for the better by Quick Start’s training.

“There aren’t enough words to say how good, how great Quick Start has been,” said Betty Clapham, The Gift Wrap Company’s Human Plant Safety Signage Resources manager. “I’ve never seen an agency like this before. I’m so impressed with what Georgia is doing to bring jobs to the state and have a service like Quick Start to help do the training. It’s the most thorough and easy-to-learn process I’ve ever seen.”

The Gift Wrap Company had used Quick Start’s services when they first opened the plant, and then during a recent expansion they decided to take full advantage of what Quick Start had to offer.

“Quick Start did it all,” Clapham said. “They wrote job descriptions, did training in core skills, plant safety, everything. The Quick Start team came out and met with us, and came up with a manufacturing process overview, a company orientation, and an overview of all our services. From customer service to the Train-the-Trainer classes, it’s safe to say that all our employees have been affected by Quick Start.”

The praise goes both ways. Ken Boyd, director of Quick Start’s Eastern Operations, lauds the company’s commitment to quality and workforce development.

“The leadership at The Gift Wrap Company has developed and promoted a very positive work environment. The employees are friendly, eager to attend training and determined in their quest to satisfy customers,” said Boyd.

And it’s that kind of dedication that leads to further job creation in Georgia. With a quality workforce, The Gift Wrap Company has been able to acquire new product lines and is making plans for still more growth and expansion.

“With each expansion we bring in new employees and have new training needs,” said Rich Eckman, The Gift Wrap Company’s executive vice president. “Quick Start’s programs help get them up and running. Quick Start takes time out of any expansion and makes those employees productive sooner.

“Having Quick Start available makes considering an expansion much more attractive,” Eckman said.

For a reprint of the original article
in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, click here.

What is Supervised On-the-Job Training?

s taught by Quick Start’s training professionals, Supervised On-the-Job Training (SOJT) can become one of the most effective ways a company can train new employees or cross-train existing employees to perform specific jobs.

The 20-hour long program is designed to prepare employees with certain skill sets how best to pass on their knowledge and train others.

Through the program, the student learns how to:

• Assess training needs. This step determines what needs to be taught, and to whom.

• Outline training objectives. This step helps the trainer break down the job and the trainee to know exactly what is expected.

• Define a job and divide it into separate tasks. This step outlines all aspects of the job, determines sequence of steps to be taught and prevents the trainer from missing steps.

• Coach the trainee through the learning process. This involves appropriate ways of questioning the student, as well as understanding issues of motivation and aptitude.

During the SOJT course, the trainee also learns how to draw up a lesson plan based on a four-step method of instruction, which is the most effective way to safely teach a specific task.

The Four Steps:

1. The instructor explains and does. This clarifies information and makes the procedures easy to understand.

2. The trainee explains and the instructor does. This allows for safe learning, where the instructor can prevent potential mistakes before they happen.

3. The trainee explains and does. This demonstrates the trainee has a complete understanding of the task being performed.

4. The trainee practices under supervision. After SOJT, the employee is prepared to instruct other employees in the proper way to perform certain tasks, helping companies operate more efficiently.


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