Case study: Training at the newly open Changi Airport Casino (CAC)

Singapore's newly opened 3rd casino, CAC caters to the needs of travellers, tourists, and thrill-seekers on transit or holiday in Singapore. Situated at Changi Airport and directly connected to all terminals via Sky train, CAC employs around 3,000 staff, including 2000 full-time casino dealers, also known as croupiers. Margaret Chan, CAC's Director of Gaming Operations, read the email she had just received from Caleb Tan, the company's Director of Training & Development, and mumbled to herself angrily.

"Not again. I'm not going to let Caleb have his way this round. Last month, he insisted that I must send 100 of my croupiers on a five-day course in customer service, leadership and team building. I had my objections but I sent them anyway. I had to activate croupiers from other shifts just to cover their duties, which caused them unhappiness, higher level of fatigue and a few resignations. This has resulted in more customer complaints and costly mistakes in pay-outs to the players. I would not allow him to tarnish our company's image in the industry. We need to compete with the other two existing Casinos for a larger pie of the business. After all, many of our croupiers had already been interviewed and selected based on their experience from other regional casinos, so why is there a need for further training?

On their return from training, they grumbled constantly about what a bore it was, and how their time had been wasted because they felt that some of the content was totally irrelevant to their jobs. They had no opportunity to practice those skills anyway due to their working schedules and the nature of their current job. There is no immediate need for the type of training that Caleb has arranged. Now he wants another 100 participants. Well, I am not going to support it anymore. He can just forget about it!"

Case questions:

1. In your own analysis, what possible errors were being made by CAC's Training Director from the perspective of a) training needs assessment, b) transfer of learning and c) training evaluation?

2. What kinds of recommendations would you propose to the Training Director to ensure that the errors you identified in the above three perspectives are eliminated?

3. What effective strategies could the Training Director use to win over the Gaming Operations Director so that she would be more supportive of training for his staff?