Businesses can discover how to achieve ‘Premier League’ standards

Businesses will discover how to achieve ‘Premier League’ standard excellence at the World of Learning exhibition at the NEC next week.

People development specialists Acua Limited and Premier League Fulham Football Club are teaming up to give an insight into their joint initiative for the top flights club’s staff to gain a professional development diploma.

‘Employee engagement on the edge: service excellence in the Premier League’ will see Robert Ordever, people development director at Fulham FC, and Michael Costello, business coach at Acua Limited, talk about the success of the partnership.

The West London club launched the course, which is accredited by Acua Limited’s parent organisation Coventry University, during the 2011-12 football season.

It focuses on customer service, personal effectiveness, management and team leadership, and has been successfully piloted with 30 matchday and frontline staff.

Fulham are believed to be the first top-flight football team to offer such a management diploma to develop its matchday and frontline staff and improve the experience for visitors to Craven Cottage.

Costello, who is leading the programme at Fulham FC, said:

We’re excited to be sharing what is a really interesting case study and success story with visitors to the World of Learning.

We’re really proud of the success of the programme at Fulham and how it is helping to engage workers, improve knowledge and skills and give people a fantastic experience on matchdays.

A lot of work went into putting the programme together, including us going undercover at a home game to assess customer service standards, along with holding a focus group with matchday staff working in areas such as catering, ticketing, retail, security and hospitality to help create the diploma.

We’re delighted with how it is progressing and look forward to sharing the experiences to date and giving a good insight into working for, and with, a major sports club and how investing in a programme like this can make a difference.

Acua Limited delivers leadership and management programmes at more than 100 organisations across the UK, including the AA, TNT, The Ritz London, and Bank of Ireland Group.

The presentation by Acua and Fulham FC takes place at 11am on Tuesday, October 2 at the World of Learning at the NEC, Birmingham.