Usdaw’s award winning Check Out Learning (COL) Campaign has been running for some years now. In the early days, its main aim was to establish the infrastructure to set up store learning and promote Usdaw membership. Over the years the campaign has developed.  

Of course, it still brings learning to stores for the first time, but it also refreshes and invigorates stores where learning has fallen away. Increasingly it is used to promote specific campaigns and initiatives. Both aims were behind the recent COL day in the Tesco Batley store.

Mobile Union Learning Rep (MULR) Heather Challis said:

The store is well organised and has reps and ULRs, but it hasn’t had any active learning days in store for many years. However, the reps are enthusiastic and the management team is very open to change and want to improve staff morale.

A COL day could be the spark to light the fire of learning again and to address morale issues."

The day was planned with the support from the store’s people manager. There was digital skills through the joint Usdaw/Tesco initiative to enable staff to use both the Usdaw web site and the “our Tesco” staff site.

Heather said:

We also thought that some staff were suffering from mental health issues, so we hoped that learning might begin to address these issues as well."

Heather attended the day with Stand Down rep Sharon Day. Store ULRs were given some time to assist. She explained:

We talked to the management team about the time needed to talk to staff and they agreed to offer staff extensions to their breaks if they wanted to learn ICT skills.

This meant that they were able to complete some tasks on the computer and help the company in the future with on-line skills.

Having our stand down rep Sharon looking at recruitment gave us more time to talk about learning and helped to recruit new members."

In total 42 staff discussed learning and 35 people were given structured advice to access further learning. 13 people signed up to learning in maths and English, distance learning and digital skills courses - including the Get on line with Usdaw course. Management were very interested and 4 of the team enrolled onto a mental health distance learning course at level 2. Four new members were recruited.

One manager who enrolled on a course said:

This is a fantastic way of learning and it will help me so much in my role, being able to have a better understanding of mental health issues I will be able to have a better insight into the situation and show much more empathy to my staff."

Heather was pleased with the way things went, adding:

The day was very successful and our objectives where achieved, but with better organisation and commitment we could have a bigger impact.

The next roadshow will be promoted in store earlier and have more information available to help staff decide what they want to learn prior to the day.

We are looking to get an outside organisation like MenCap involved to help promote some issues more and encourage staff to sign up on courses to increase their own knowledge.

It doesn’t matter how many times you run a COL campaign you always learn something to make it better next time."