Revised Project Proposal for a Company

Revised Project Proposal

When a company expands its operations to a new location, it requires the hiring of new employees who need to be trained according to the company’s values and the industry standards along with best practices. Shippers Warehouse targets attaining the best engaged and high-performing employees at its 3PL warehouses so that the final consumer receives high-quality products. A committed workforce is known to produce positive outcomes for the firm and the same is the aim of the project that could be initiated by Shippers Warehouse for training its food-grade operations warehouse’s employees at its new locations. The project would include the deliverables, the stakeholders involved, timelines, tasks, and deadlines by highlighting the staffing and non-staffing needs, if any, together with the estimation of the overall project costs.

Summary of the Project

Recently, Shippers Warehouse has announced the expansion of its warehousing services to 16 nationwide locations (The Shippers Group, 2021). The new facility is the mixing warehouse where one of the dedicated facilities is for food-grade operation. The project would focus on the training of the new personnel that would be hired for new locations, particularly for the food-grade section so that the intricacies of handling the food at certain temperatures and good housekeeping practices could be taught to the new workers. Since the company envisions providing value to its customers and an ultimate supply chain experience by constantly improving services (The Shippers Group, n.a.), excellence, safety, and integrity have to be sustained by continuous training and development.

The training would not only include the dissemination of information about the warehousing practices but also would instigate them to ask questions, especially in a workshop manner so that discussions and cross-questioning could instill in them the value of operations. The logistics and supply routines would be educated to them orally and practically for letting them know how processes are carried out at Shippers Warehouse exclusively.

Stakeholders and Their Impact

The stakeholders for this project would be the company itself, its employees, the companies who rely on Shippers Warehouse for logistics and distribution, farmers, retailers, and the final consumers. Each one of the stakeholders would have a substantial impact on the project and its outcomes since maintain high food quality at certain temperatures is critical. The food distributed to the general public should be safe and protected at every stage from being farmed at the fields, being processed by the big food companies, being packed at the packaging or warehousing facilities, and finally being shipped to the targeted consumers so that the critical links of the supply chain perform their duties once the employees know their right obligations.

Updated Goals and Objectives

Goals

· To gain better employee performance so that reinforcement of the company’s values and integrity could be reflected in employee practices at the food warehouse.

· To achieve the same standards of quality in the warehousing services that are maintained at the rest of the locations of Shippers Warehouse. The new expansions would not jeopardize at all the warehousing, distribution, and logistics principles as it knows the significance of delivering excellence to its multi-client business.

Objectives

· To prepare the newly hired employees for expanded locations to meet the challenges of keeping the food free from bacteria and illness, and instill a sense of an uncompromised pledging of sanitation at the facilities.

· To help the employees understand the importance of warehousing practices in handling food materials, for instance, washing hands, wearing headbands, clean handling, and prohibition of cell phone use, etc. (The Shippers Groups, 2021)

3 Key Milestones or Deliverables of the Project

The project deliverables include:

i. Better employee knowledge is the primary deliverable of the project so that the strengthening of the existing skills is ensured. If the employees are closely informed about the company’s infrastructure and how certain practices in food warehousing are performed, they would perform better, adding to their productivity. This productivity is guaranteed to enhance the firm’s warehousing services that the customers have been relying on for years. Employee training would include polishing their competencies related to the use of digital tools and contemporary sales techniques.

ii. Professional and career development of the employees, also with constant training in future is another project deliverable. It is for the purpose to keep the employees updated with the skills in line with the industry standards so that remaining competitive with the rivals is not challenging anymore. Moreover, once the employees are equipped with the necessary skills for a task, they would be able to handle the shortages and contingencies. It should not be undermined that training employees would increase the productivity of the warehouse (Jacobs & Washington, 2003), heighten the levels of job satisfaction, and reduce their turnover in the future (Al-Sharafi, Mat & Alam, 2018).

iii. Benchmark standards of warehousing that are carried out at the other Shippers Warehouse facilities should be followed at the newly expanded locations. The advanced levels of present-day skills for working effectively and efficiently would be taught to the newly hired workers at the new facilities so that similar outcomes could be obtained as the rest of the previous warehousing spaces.

High-Level Timeline Including Tasks and Deadlines

The total time frame for the project and the involved training of the new employees would be nine months. Different tasks are included in the training program so that each new employee is thoroughly trained in every way and no stone is left unturned in familiarizing them with the minute details of food warehousing. The tasks would span over one month after the other in order to acquaint the workers with the skills and expertise of their job tasks. The tasks and their relevant deadlines are outlined below (Bleich, n.a.).

Training methods and tasks

Deadlines

Instructor-led training

1 or 2 months depending upon the understanding levels of the new employees

E-learning

2 months

Hands-on training

2 months

Coaching and mentoring

Ongoing for nine months

Lectures

1 month

Group discussions and activities

1 month

Case studies

1 month

Estimation of Project’s Overall Costs, Staffing, and Non-Staffing Resources Required

Staffing Needs

For instructor-led training, e-learning and lectures, training professionals would be required. The professionals would be hired, for every new expanded location for Shippers Warehouse, as it has been mentioned that new warehouses at 16 locations are to be launched. It means that 16 training specialists would be hired for this purpose. It could be conducted in the form of webinars or workshops with multimedia. The topics could be divided into weekly training sessions for one or two months. The topics can include sanitization practices at the warehouse, first-aid knowledge, food protection, and contamination, material and equipment handling, general cleanliness practices at the warehouse facility, pest control information, stealth and vandalism, security cameras and gated entrances, chemical control, cross-examination of the food materials, checking the docking needs and compliance with HACCP (The Shippers Group, 2021a; US Food and Drug Administration, n.a.). However, it is preferred that e-learning should be conducted first so that online course sets an idea for the trainers that which trainees are capable of understanding things and which ones are weak to grasp the concepts quickly. The weak ones would be focused more on later in classroom training sessions by the same professional trainers.

The hiring of supervisors for hands-on training is essential as well since being employed directly on the job would help the new employees understand the intricacies of handling food with deeper interpretations of the company’s policies, best practices, and working of the industry standards.

Coaching and mentoring would be ongoing training task in which the new employees or trainees would be open to asking questions as they feel comfortable, either during the instructor-led training sessions or while hands-on training at the warehouses. For this purpose, the professional trainers or the supervisors could fulfill the need.

Group discussions and activities could include small group activities such as prompting them to answer the step-by-step process of changing gloves so as to avoid pathogens and allergens contamination, the process of washing hands properly, and wearing new gloves again, explaining the difference between cleaning and sanitizing, applying mechanisms for seeing the germs in green light when hands are not washed or any surface is left contaminated for making them know better the importance of cleaning accurately, and prevention of cross-contamination, etc. (State Food Safety Resources, n.a.)

Case studies are a good method for assisting the trainees to know about the prior industry practices that have been carried out in other firms and warehouses before. The trainees would be enlightened about the real workplace practices, which could be done individually or in groups. It could also be inculcated in group activities’ sessions for letting the new employees solve the cases on their own based on the training sessions’ learnings consummated for this project and its preceding months.

Non-Staffing Needs

For e-learning, it is imperative to ensure that new employees have smartphones or laptops within their reach, especially at home. It is said for the reason that during the current times of pandemic, distant learning has now become a new norm. Also, possession of a smartphone at all times is a ritual as well for almost every citizen in today’s times. Hence, distance learning for lectures and instructor-led training would not be a hindrance with useful gadgets.

The use of multimedia would be guaranteed as well since information needs to be communicated to the new employees credibly to a large group. Conversely, the training could be arranged in small groups also but it would take more resources and days for executing training sessions for each small group of new employees separately.