Serious retailing for the Riverina

Petrea Pollock, Operations Manager for Wright Group KFC franchise with Chris Greentree, consultant for Riverina's MEGT Australian Apprenticeships Centre

Riverina retailers serious about attracting good quality staff to their business have been turning more and more towards providing traineeships according to Chris Greentree, one of the Consultants for Riverina’s MEGT Australian Apprenticeships Centre.

With its 13 stores, the Wright Group KFC franchise is a major employer in the region and has been using traineeships in their strategy to assure staff of a career pathway. This means Petrea Pollock, Operations Manager for the franchise has to keep track of their 80 trainees, the weekly status of their on-the-job and offsite training, the forms they have to fill out for the Australian government, their entitlements and the financial incentives they are eligible for.

Wright Group KFC franchise

‘It can be complex,’ explains Ms Pollock, ‘but MEGT’s online tracking system is a fantastic help, particularly at tax time and when we have trainees completing their qualification at different times and at different store sites.’

The online system is part of the infrastructure behind Chris Greentree’s personal service to KFC, who works one-on-one with Ms Pollock and monitors the progress of each of her trainees.

KFC likes to ‘grow their own managers’ according to Ms Pollock. It’s not unusual for them to start with their Certificate II Retail, then for prospective management staff to progress on to Certificate III Retail, with the possibility of progressing to Certificate IV Retail Management whereupon completion they could potentially end up managing their own restaurant and have 60+ employees reporting to them.

The traineeships are not just for young people.
The combination of providing a strong career path with flexible work hours has been particularly attractive to working mums according to Ms Pollock. It is not just a part time job at KFC, she says. It is a really good career if you like customer service and working with people.

Australian Apprenticeships are an Australian government initiative.

MEGT (Australia) | Australian Apprenticeships