GRSA invests US$ 1.56 million in training project
Valor Econômico - 07/14/2008
Brazilian company GRSA - national leader in collective meals - has just launched its corporate university. A total of R$ 2.5 million (US$ 1.56 million) is being invested in the project that chose to offer all training courses outside home. To do so, it entered into a partnership with four educational institutions and one consulting company: Senac (National Service for Commercial Apprenticeship), Getulio Vargas Foundation (Fundação Getulio Vargas) (FGV), Catho Corporate Education (Catho Educação Corporativa), Anhembi-Morumbi University, and São Paulo Business School (BSP). The agreement will allow the students to do the training programs, many of which made to order, in their premises. In FGV's case, the certificates will be issued by GRSA together with that school, recognized by the Ministry of Education (MEC). According to Márcia Cubas, GRSA HR director, the company developed a menu involving 270 options of short, mid and long term courses for the many hierarchic levels of the group, including top management. It took five months to format the project, after a survey on the needs of the company, which intends to get to 2010 with nearly 35 thousand employees. The expectation is that until the end of the year, the program should have at least half the employees enrolled in some of the offered courses. The courses, subsidized by the company, will be both presence-based and virtual ones, and they will be available in the GRSA Intranet, so that employees can access them at home. The content is developed by the partner institutions. According to Márcia, the university will soon be extended to customers and suppliers. With this model, the company intends to reduce the costs of training by 20%, mainly through the use of e-learning as a tool, which serve the 1.5 thousand operating units spread in the companies - as in IBM -, hospitals, schools, and airports. GRSA, controlled by British group Compass, is currently present in 360 cities and has in total 27 thousand employees. In 2007, it registered sales of R$ 1.3 billion (US$ 812.5 million).