MDS is a non-profit making recruitment and training organisation with approximately 26 members specialising in the fresh produce and horticultural supply chain. Harper Adams University College is the UK’s leading university institution serving the rural and land-based industries. Together, the two organisations have a plan that can change the face of training for the fresh produce industry and many other sectors besides.
The catalyst to the groundbreaking partnership was undoubtedly the appointment by MDS of Doug Henderson, formerly chief executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium, as its new chairman three years ago. “One of the concerns I had when I took on this role was that we were essentially assessing our own performance - and we thought we were doing really well. The personal development planning model is the basis on which MDS has been built for 20 years,” says Henderson. “It has worked and been very successful, but we decided to review the whole model - the business plan and the training strategy, and it held up very well to scrutiny. Transforming that into something that could be recognised for a PgC required more rigour, however, and that’s where Harper Adams has already been an invaluable partner. In order to decide whether we were compatible partners, they independently audited the programme and we let the students provide the evidence.”
Charles Cowap, life long learning manager at Harper Adams and the head of this project for the university college, says: “The fact that such an excellent structure was already in place was a really good starting point for us to work with MDS. If we were to work with anybody, it was going to be MDS.
“Not all of the member companies are necessarily household names, but it struck me that a large proportion of the nation’s food supply is handled by these guys.” The membership also accounts for more than 50 percent of the UK cut-flower supply industry.
The strategic fit between MDS and Harper Adams became apparent during long and honest discussions between the two. “By combining our resources, MDS and Harper Adams have created new opportunities, releasing synergetic energies through a truly pioneering idea and concept. It will be of huge benefit not only to this sector, but hopefully to any other sector in due course,” says Cowap.
The MDS mission is to provide its members with junior managers who have gained relevant experience and also demonstrated both management capability and potential to move through the ranks. Under a two-year contract with MDS, each of the 20 trainees taken in by MDS each year undertakes a unique mix of four, five to six month secondments within the membership base, throwing up challenges in various roles including quality control, harvest management, commercial sales, technical development and supply analysis. This is backed up by high-quality off-the-job managing training and development - getting wet on Windermere, as Cowap puts it succinctly - with the intended core competence being managing people. “This is absolutely vital,” says Henderson. “The key ability of a manager has to be to get the most out of their staff, colleagues, suppliers and customers.”
The junior managers have the opportunity to bridge the gap between university and work and gain extensive work experience with the back-up of constantly available coaching, mentoring and support from the MDS team. “The network you make while working with four, usually very different companies, will set you up very well,” says Cowap. “What other training scheme will give you experience in four companies, four different cultures, roles and purposes?” asks Cowap. “And the ability to pull away from the workplace and reflect during the off-the-job courses is extremely important.”
The PgC, says Cowap, will enhance the attraction of the MDS scheme to potential recruits and demonstrate to member companies the commitment to lifelong learning of the programme. It will also reinforce supply-chain relationships that demand evidence of staff development, he says, adding: “This takes MDS onto the next level and the trainees a third of the way towards a masters degree.
“For the student, the post-graduate certificate on top of MDS is another badge of achievement, which can only help.”
Henderson adds: “To get the right calibre of graduates may well become more difficult. In order to give ourselves the chance to still get the best, we have to offer more.”
There have been no sweeping changes to the MDS model as a result of the review. “We have tweaked around the edges, but have undergone a rigorous review to provide the evidence that the model delivers what it says it delivers,” Henderson says. “It will lead to a significant ratcheting up of the quality of the programme and we will now set about combining the key strengths of MDS and Harper Adams to make it even stronger.”
“It has been an invaluable experience for us to get inside the skin of a programme like this and break down some of the barriers between industry and education by finding out what the fresh produce industry wants from training courses and not just sticking rigidly to the traditional way of doing things,” says Cowap.
“We are not looking to be intrusive - the story you get time and time again from industry is ‘there was a training scheme, but it became a nuisance and didn’t give us what we needed’.”
The more robust scheme offers short- and long-term benefits to the membership. The first of course is immediate access to enthusiastic graduates, keen to take on the responsibility and challenge of a five to six month work placement, and to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the fold. Secondly, members have a highly developed off-the-job training programme for their existing managers to call on. In the longer term, the availability of a pool of MDS leavers with wide levels of skills, experience and knowledge can prove invaluable, as can the capacity to spread the cost and risk of investing in management training.
The MDS schedule is extremely tightly planned from start to finish, with initial candidates subjected to an exhaustive interview, including psychometric testing, before the chosen few are put through their paces and prepared for the task ahead by a three-day induction process. The thorough beginning is designed to take the pitfalls out of selection and ensure that only those who are most likely to stay the course even leave the starting gate. Regular reviews are carried out throughout the two years, at the end of and often during secondments, before a final session with the review board at the end of the two years, when success or failure is eventually determined.
“One of the key performance indicators of MDS has to be the number of people who fail or leaves us for one reason or another. It is possible to fail - one person did this year - says Henderson. “But it is very concerning when this happens and it is very unlikely that it will happen with a trainee who has gone through the whole two years. If we do the job properly at interview stage and early reviews, we ought to be able to pick out the people with the most aptitude for managing in the fresh produce industry. The review process is constant - we work very hard with the trainees to ensure that they are successful.
“Prospective trainees have the opportunity to talk to former and current trainees and find out their experiences, warts and all. They have to understand the nature of the decision they are making and we give them every possible chance to be clear in their own minds whether MDS is going to be the right route for them to take.”
Once the course is embarked upon, MDS and Harper Adams will provide coaching, mentoring and support. Off-the-job training is supplied by a number of independent training providers, including the Dove Nest Group. Personal support for trainees stretches seamlessly across the two years of the course. “We take personal development planning one step further by clearly showing how it can be integrated with the working experiences of the trainees,” says Dani Shaw, MDS general manager.
And Cowap adds: “The support mechanism that MDS has in place was extremely important in our decision. If a student comes to Harper Adams, the tools and resources needed to support them are here on the campus. MDS was already providing that support and guidance for its trainees.”
The trainees are employees of MDS, salaried and looked after by the MDS team, which leaves members to essentially hire their services for six months at a time without the attendant administration and personnel issues. It also allows the trainees to enter into gainful employment at a time when their pockets will be feeling the strain. “Many graduates finish with huge debts and the alternative to a training scheme for some would be an vocational MSc, with no salary and considerable extra cost. MDS is specific and generic in different ways and an MSc graduate will not have the level of experience necessary to launch themselves into the industry,” says Professor Wynne Jones, principal at Harper Adams.
A ‘meet the leavers’ evening is organised for each group of trainees, at which attendee members are given a leavers’ book containing the details of each trainee’s secondments and achievements, as well as a potential leavers’ handbook, with similar detail on trainees nearing the end of their course. “On average, one on every course will leave,” says Shaw. “But everyone who wants one gets a job within the industry and between 80 and 90 percent are employed within the membership.”
Some of the off-the-job training, provided by the Dove Nest Group, would not look out of place with Alan Sugar in the chair. Turning up at a large company, across the spectrum of industry sectors but never fresh produce, on a Sunday evening, students are given five days to complete specific Apprentice-style tasks, each taking a different role, before presenting findings, results and analysis to real-life boards on the Friday. “The assignments they are doing take them out of their comfort zone and require real out-of-the-box thinking,” says Shaw. “So many of the skills they learn are transferrable to the fresh produce industry.”
Until now, the work carried out on these training courses has been retained by the companies, almost as a form of free consultancy. But with the PgC status, trainees will write up their experiences and have them formally assessed.
Harper Adams will be responsible for the oversight of the assessment and moderation. “We are still relatively small and focussed on the land-based sector and not actually a university. But size and focus are amongst our strengths,” says Cowap. We were given our own degree-awarding powers in 1995 and the same PhDs in 2006. We were the top scoring institution in the agriculture and food sectors when last assessed and we have higher research degree awarding powers than some large universities.”
The university college was recently made a centre for excellence in teaching and learning, in recognition of its outstanding achievements in this area. It received a £1.9 million grant, which was partly used to establish the Aspire Centre, which provides students both on campus and off with a rich range of modern learning opportunities. The outreach capabilities, with virtual learning a key element, played a big part in the decision of the two parties to work together. Aspire was also useful, because the funding effectively paid for my time to research the link with MDS,” says Cowap.
The first trainees to leave MDS with a PgC as well as their management expertise will begin their training in September this year, and graduate in 2009 with a ceremony at Harper Adams, which is near Newport, Shropshire. There are no plans to broaden the scheme’s horizons before then. “Our intentions are very straightforward at this point. The task is to deliver this over the next two years, after which we will re-evaluate and decide where to go from there,” says Henderson. “There are a maximum of 40 trainees in the system at any one time and that is manageable at our existing size. There are more applicants than places and more secondments than trainees, so we have a nice balance. But once we’ve got everything running perfectly and we get to the 2009 review board stage, we will sit down with our partners and have a look at where we go in the future.”
Jones says the link is a great fillip to both industry and education: “This is just the beginning. But Harper Adams and MDS create the perfect balance between the needs of the employers and the trainees. There is a lot of learning for us in this process and we expect this work to lead the way not just for the different sectors in our patch, but across higher education in due course.”
Vice principal Alison Blackburn adds: “The quality of the young people in the ranks is the thing that will make higher education sharpen up its act. Students have been taught to think, but this programme allows them to use the skills they have in a relevant environment.”
Aspirations beyond 2009 are already at least partly formed, admits Cowap. “This is a flagship project for Harper Adams and one we have already learnt a lot from and would like to replicate in other sectors. But this project was only validated at the end of May and we are certainly not going to get too far ahead of ourselves.”
“We’ve done the strategic thinking, put the strategy in place and now we have got to put it into practice. This was a wish for members and trainees that have now left MDS and now the timing is right.
“It will be interesting to see what reaction we get when this becomes public knowledge,” says Henderson. “We have had discussions overseas about the MDS programme and I’m expecting a lot of questions about how MDS works.
“We can change the public perception of the produce industry with this,” says Henderson. “It has not been a very sexy industry to train for traditionally, but to gain a PgC alters that perception right from the off. It says a lot about our approach - that we are a much more professional industry and can provide more opportunities and options for trainees.”
Shaw and Saffy Connolly, MDS development manager, have already been on the road to places including Newcastle, Birmingham and Belfast, to spread the word about the new opportunity. “The chance to obtain a PgC has had a very good impact,” says Connolly. “Just telling people has increased the number of applications significantly.”
The types of graduates that are both applying for and being accepted into the scheme has already changed significantly in the last decade, with the traditional agri-food background now not necessarily the norm. “The members still want all of the scientific and agricultural skills they have always wanted before, but new skills sets are becoming increasingly sought-after. One of the main things the members are asking for now, for instance, is language ability,” says Shaw, using the example of Lesley Robertson, an International Business and Language graduate who is nearing the end of the scheme and will soon be in full-time employment in the industry. “Ten years ago, we probably would not have looked at someone like that,” adds Shaw.
The source of candidates is widening as the course develops, reflecting the employee demographic of the fresh produce industry in the UK. “We have had a number of applicants from the French, Greek and Polish communities,” says Henderson. “We are progressively becoming more dependent on a huge number of central Europeans coming into our workforce and it is important to be able to say to them that there are opportunities to progress up the ladder in the fresh produce industry. Our members are actively encouraging central Europeans to develop into junior managers and we offer a route for them to do that.”
The fresh produce industry can be justifiably proud that such an innovative scheme has sprung up from its ranks, says Henderson, and now that it is the first industry to have a work-based academic qualification to itself.
MDS is not atypical as a graduate trainee scheme, he says. “Many postgraduate courses or graduate training courses do not deliver the structure or training they promise. That is the real difference between most graduate trainee schemes and MDS. Most schemes are merely an induction programme for large organisations, rather than management training - it is a very important distinction to make.”
Henderson has found a refreshingly different attitude towards management training prevails within the MDS membership. “Increasingly, the supply chain is not just about the quality of the produce, but what you are doing with the people behind it,” he says.
“While I was with FPC, I was constantly pushing water uphill when I talked about the need for effective training. Here, I can feel a real pull,” says Henderson. “That pull is for greater professionalism right along the supply chain.”
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