Beetle's About!

ASM Engineer Michael Hughes blogs about the joys of owning a forty-year old VW Beetle and how the atypically German car actually has a colourful English heritage.

The long summer evenings lend themselves to escaping the television and taking my forty year old VW Beetle for a gentle amble round the leafy lanes of Cheshire.

I have owned the car for a long time, running it as my first car for nearly a decade before replacing it. But I just couldn’t part with this thoroughly reliable beast even though it had started to look a little frayed around the edges.

I had offers to buy it but that only encouraged me to keep it. I therefore decided to have it restored professionally - a project which lasted for a little over two years. It returned to home looking like a shiny new vehicle which now appears on dry days or at the occasional Classic Car show.

But how did this vehicle become iconic being manufactured across different continents of the world for forty plus years and become the centre for films Walt Disney has made based on the character ‘Herbie’? It’s not exactly an attractive or practical vehicle yet it still doesn’t look out of place on our roads. Its origins as the “Peoples Car” for the German people before the Second World War is well documented but the destruction of the factory at Wolfsburg at the end of the war may well have seen its demise.

What may not be known is that it was left to a British Army major to organise the restarting of production after the end of the Second World War. Major Ivan Hirst of the Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers was responsible for the Beetle project under British Administration and he restarted the production of the Beetle car. Beetle production was eventually passed back to German Heinz Nordhoff to organize production. He quickly increased production and by 1955 the one millionth beetle had come off the assembly line.

Taking the Beetle to Classic Car Shows is always interesting. Many people approach you to recall the days when they had a Beetle and discuss how reliable it was and what fun to drive. They always were reluctant to part with it but growing families meant it was no longer practical to keep it.

I have been asked by children if this is “Herbie” from the films but explained that it is Herbie’s first cousin. This has satisfied the young inquiring mind. Shortly after the launch of the last Herbie film children wanted their photograph standing by my Beetle because, being Pastel White, it is close to the colour of Herbie in the film.

The fun for me is in owning the car for so long as well as the fact it is so reliable. It is always quick to start. It also a reminder that cars of its era are very basic and that car technology has come a long way since my Beetle was built.

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The Hidden Cost To Your Business Of Not Training Your Staff

Atlas Director and project consultant Diane Lonsdale blogs about the risks businesses take when they fail to invest properly in the training of staff members and the impact this can have on their ability to provide great service to their customers.

This article, on a website aimed at employees with problems in the workplace, interested me as I train end users and am involved in our Application Systems Management department.

Your company will have invested in business software solutions in order to maximise the potential of the business and to ensure that your workflow processes are as lean as possible. One interpretation of lean is to maximise production with the minimum of labour resources. This can only be achieved if the users of the business software solutions know how to use them correctly and in the most effective way.

When your company invested in these solutions you will also have invested in specialist training, delivered in a way to ensure the solutions were used correctly and in the most effective way, but what happens when these trained staff leave your employment?

Do you have dedicated members of staff who can train any new employees effectively in all aspects of the systems they are expected to use? Or is it that the incumbent staff member simply spends a few hours showing their replacement what they think they need to know, and will more than likely just hand over the sections of knowledge that are pertinent to their job role rather than the whole spectrum of the solution. Is the potential value of the software diluted during this 'training'?

Can you afford not to invest in initial training or indeed refresher training on a regular basis?

Cost is the main reason cited for not implementing this process but if you don’t then the value of the original investment is diminished.

It may be more cost effective to ensure key members of your workforce have the necessary skills to train new employees, and this is not just about your IT solutions, it also needs to be your business processes and Health and Safety Regulations.

Another reason cited by Senior Management for not investing in staff training is that if they normally have a high staff turnaround then the investment is wasted, as soon as the employees have been trained then they leave the business and therefore incur high costs. Research has proven the opposite to this theory. In an article by Jonathan Moules in the Financial Times, he quotes the latest piece of research on the subject,

“The biggest motivator for 43 per cent of staff surveyed was having a passion for their job or company. Seven out of 10 workers said that an employer’s commitment to staff training is important in helping them feel valued, and 69 per cent said it was important in making them want to work hard.”

Training employees on a regular basis ensures your investments - in software, in people, in the very core of your business processes - don't diminish and enable your workplace to remain productive, proactive and happy. Training isn't an 'optional extra', it is a must have which empowers workers and ensures customers are satisfied.