This report discusses training needs for employees of Decathlon, a French sports equipment retailer. It recommends that training include both hard skills like product knowledge, as well as soft skills such as communication, attitude and customer service. A competency mapping process is outlined to identify the key skills required for each role. Suggested training methods include behavioural training to build skills like teamwork, confidence and patience; as well as domain knowledge training and business communication skills. The goal is to transform employees into "brands" that provide customers a superior experience.

1. OFF SITE LIVE PROJECT
REPORT ON DECATHLON
Submitted by
Atul Anand Gurav – PGDM2
Shubham Vithal Parsekar – PGDM2
December 1, 2015

2. "We are working in the Retail Industry and that too
in the Sports Retail Industry. What kind of
Trainings do you think would be relevant for
people working in the Retail Store and in the
corporate office - general and specific trainings -
what would be the methods adopted for Training".

3. Executive Summary
The report is written to include the solutions
for challenges faced by Decathlon in retail
stores specifically issues in training. Training
will include hard skills (domain subject

4. knowledge), soft skills (Attitude and
behaviour) required to overcome obstacles
and to cater to the challenges arising out of
customers’ expectations.
Key Words: Valued Customer, Soft Skills and
Hard Skills, Behavioural Skills, Competency
Mapping.
LIMITATIONS
Further detailed work is possible, only on
understanding the different skills and

5. competencies that are present in each of the
different job descriptions.
While this exercise gives a flavour of the training
that needs to be carried, it will vary from person to
person based on the Boss' KRAs and performance
appraisal.
There will be a need to study each JD and the
performance and the gaps and then suggest the
training which is broadly classified in three
headings:
 Behavioural
 Domain Knowledge
 Business Communications
For example: A sales person at the counter is very
good in product knowledge, but has difficulty in
helping the customer (of course, when asked) to
decide on a brand, among a series of
brands/products and to balance his ambitions and
affordability. Also, this sales person, may lack in
the ability to negotiate (to carry out a promotion of
products/brands when inventory is slow moving, in
a particular store.
Thus the possible areas for training would be:

6. a. Negotiation
b.Customer stickiness
c. Cross Selling
d.Competition Analysis
e. Collaboration and coordination among teams
f. team selling
Similarly, it can be worked out for a finance
executive:
a. Business Communications
b. Recent compliances by RBI, SEBI, CLB, GAAP, etc
c. Inter department conflict resolution
d. MIS generation and also helping the line guys to
understand the P&L
e. Team work
All assessment centres will be for determining the
HIGH PERFORMERS AND HIGH POTENTIALS. The
latter will be used for succession planning.
Thus, if we get an opportunity to work at
Decathlon, we will help and support the HR team to
decode the requirements for effective working.

8. Why Decathlon Project
It will give us an exposure in dealing with real life
situation in the field which we are opting to
specialise in and it’s an opportunity for us to
provide solution to the query and contribute in
making a difference.

9. Pain Area
What kind of Trainings would be relevant for
people working in the Retail Store and in the
corporate office - general and specific trainings -
what would be the methods adopted for Training.

10. Brief about Company
Decathlon is a French Sports equipment and
Sports-wear company founded in 1976. Sell sports
products in more than 725 stores in 20 countries
around the world and develop their own products
under the flagship brand “Oxylane”

11. MISSION
To produce and sell under one roof the right choice
of attractive, qualitative and affordable products for
amateurs in 40 sports.
OVER 40 SPORTS UNDER ONE ROOF
They currently sell products for more than 40
Sports covering an extensive range of more than
4,000 products to address the needs of all types of
users.
Probable solution

12. Behavioural Skills, Hard Skills (Domain Knowledge)
and soft skills (Business Communication) are very
much essential to both top management and
people working in retail stores. Corporate office
employees must have both the skills, as they need
to get first-hand experience of various tasks which
employees in stores goes through and this will
better allow them to provide a good valuable input
which will result in good performance of the
employee and Decathlon’s sale.
Every organisation needs competency mapping to
get to know perfect scenario of employee’s
competencies.
COMPETENCY MAPPING is a process to identify key
competencies for an organization or a job and
incorporating those competencies throughout the
various processes (i.e. job evaluation, training,
recruitment) of the organization.
Steps involved in competency mapping.

13. i. Questionnaire - Conduct a job analysis by
gathering from employees what they feel are
the key behaviours necessary to perform
their respective jobs.
ii. Develop a job description – based on the
results of the analyses after carefully
analysing the input from the represented
group of employees and converting it to
standard competencies.
iii. The competencies of the respective job
description become factors for assessment
on the performance evaluation. Using
competencies will help to perform more
objective evaluations based on displayed or
not displayed behaviours.
iv. Employer can use the results of employee’s
evaluation to identify in what competencies
individuals need additional development or
training. This will help in focusing on
training needs required to achieve the goals
of the position and company and help the
employees develop toward the ultimate
success of the organization.

14. METHODS OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
1)Assessment Centre:
a)Group Discussions: In these, candidates are
brought together as a committee or project
team with one or a number of items to make
a recommendation on. In the work place,
discussions enable management to draw on
the ideas and expertise of staff, and to
acknowledge the staff as valued members of
a team.
b)Role Plays: candidates will be allowed 15 -30
minutes to prepare for such a meeting and
will be given a short, general brief on the
objective of the meeting. Although the
assessment is made mainly on the conduct
of the meeting.
c) Case Studies / Analysis Exercises: In this
type of exercise the candidate is presented

15. with the task of making a decision about a
particular business case.
2)Psychometric Tests: Most of these tests are
time bound and have a correct answer. A
person’s score is calculated on the basis of
correct answers. Most tests could be classified
in two broad categories:
a)Aptitude Tests: They refer to the potentiality
that a person has to profit from training. It
predicts how well a person would be able to
perform after training and not what he has
done in the past. They are developed to
identify individuals with special inclinations
in given abilities. Hence they cover more
concrete, clearly defined or practical abilities
like mechanical aptitude, clinical aptitude
and artistic aptitude etc.
b)Achievement Tests: These tests measure the
level of proficiency that a person has been

16. able to achieve. They measure what a person
has done. Most of these tests measure such
things as language usage, arithmetic
computation and reasoning etc.
Training for people in Retail stores and Corporate.
1. Behavioural Training
2. Domain Knowledge
3. Business Communication
Decathlon should inculcate a practise of
transforming and considering their employees as
Brands, by following certain training practises, so
that the customers who is the boss , receives a rich
and superior experience when interacting with
Decathlon Brand’s.
1)Behavioural Training
i. Lively Orientation: Initial Training is very
much important and crucial. One needs to

17. know about the domain field in which
employee is going to work. So the task
here of HR training team is to ensure,
he/she gets a detail description of the
company work culture, policies, dress
code, facilities available for them,
individual job description.
ii. Positivity: The Smile on the face of
employee can make a world of difference
to customers from long and possibly
chaotic day. More than communication
part of staff, first thing a customer looks at
the face of the staff, so it is very much
crucial to enlighten the mood of employee
so that it reflects on his face. The ability to
smile in the face of employee a long and
possibly chaotic day can make a world of
difference to customers
Suggestion: - This can be incorporated in
Decathlon by playing a more of a sarcastic
or humour related video on huge screen or

18. television set in the store before the store
opens to enlighten the employee’s mood.
iii. Building Team spirit: Coordination in a
team is very important. If the Organisation
like Decathlon need to flourish in market,
than team spirit is required. If there is
dispute or conflict among team members,
it will eventually reflect in the way they
behave towards the customers.
Suggestion: - Organizing task related to
teamwork which includes 5-6 employees
once a week, which will also help in
knowing and better understanding of each
other and will help in maintaining better
work environment.
iv. Confidence and friendliness: The
confidence to make eye contact and strike
up a conversation with strangers is
absolutely essential. Customers don’t want
to deal with sales associates who are not
friendly.

19. Suggestion: - Counselling session for
those specific employees who think they
are week in this soft skill.
v. Patience: - Dealing with people means that
you will have to take the good with the
bad. The patience to deal with all types of
customers is vital. Not all customers are
same, different people have different
attributes and way of communication
which the sales representative attending
them may perceive it to be different.
Suggestion: - Stress interview rounds
which will help gain confidence and
develop the habit of maintaining their cool
even in the worst scenario.
vi. Proactive: - It’s never a good idea to wait
until a customer is stressed or agitated
before offering assistance. Being one step
ahead to gauge when someone needs help

20. is the best way to minimize a brewing
situation.
Suggestion: - This activeness can be
installed in employees through
Motivational speech and stories about
various personalities mainly from sports
and Sales related field and their success
story. This can be done by conducting
assembly before the store opens.
2)Domain Knowledge:
i) Product knowledge: - A sales representative
who doesn’t perfectly understand the
product which they’re selling, is a completely
ineffective representative. They should be
able to explain in detail how each product
works, what business value it offers, and the
reasons it appeals to company’s ideal
customers. Material used in making of the
product. Its alternate uses. What will the

21. customer benefit from the product? Finally
the price of the product.
Suggestion: - To keep sales representative
well grossed with the product information
and the news related to it, company should
display Ad’s around the stores so that it will
help customers as well as sales
representative while explaining to customer.
ii)Production process- Having an In-depth
knowledge of the process through which the
product has undergone through is always a
plus point, it increases one’s self confidence
and can handle any issue raised relating to
it.
Suggestion: - Organising a monthly visit to
production plant will help sales
representatives to be well aware of material
and ingredients used in it.
iii) Exit counter handling: - This is the main
place which determines whether the

22. customer is happy with the service of the
store or not. Generally in stores, staff
handling the payment section are very
inefficient in handling the card swipe
machines.
Suggestion: - Training the staff during
induction and also providing training to
some other sales representative so is to
keep backup, in case of unavailability of
trained employee.
iv) Training back end office (supply chain
management):- Supply chain management is
very much important because it ensures a
continuous flow of goods at the right time. A
person handling the back end office should
be also technologically updated.
Suggestion: - Training session organized for
person handling supply chain along with
software’s like SAP or Tally ERP which is very
much essential to keep track of the items
ordered by customers and accordingly how
much need to be produced again.

23. v) Workshops: Conducting workshops will help
to bring management team and store team
together to drive customer service. It will
help employees to understand the key
features and benefits of Decathlon products,
to enhance their confidence when assisting
customers and to provide the skills to upsell
and add on sales.
vi) On the Job Training: Decathlon’s Brands
should provide coaching to Employees in the
Decathlon’s Stores, through on the job
training explaining about the key features
and benefits of the products. Ways to
improve on Selling skills and techniques.
Employees should be encouraged to ask as
many questions and to engage in role
playing to increase customer service skills.
3)Business Communication

24. How sales personnel engage customers, can
make or break a retail store. It’s all about
the initial engagement and how the
engagement commences that determines
how the rest of the shopping experience will
go and therefore Soft skills plays a very
crucial role. Following are the list of
essential soft skills training need to be
focused on.
Communication: Fluency in English is
important, it portrays one has a good
knowledge of the subject. But more than the
fluency, the tone and voice modulation is
very much important. Communication main
goal is to tell the customers what is the
problem a product or service will solve.
Suggestion: - To ensure fluency of English,
company needs to conduct a session once or
twice a week on English speaking in different
batches, at a time when there are less

25. customers in the store. Technology also can
be utilised to help in improving the
communication. E.g. – Use of karaoke mike
or extempore.
Whether it's practicing effective verbal
communication, being purposefully positive
at work, or learning to work in teams or
groups, any time invested into honing soft
skills is likely a good investment. Unlike
specific technical skills, soft skills are almost
always transferable among jobs and even
industries.

27. Conclusion
To conclude, we all know that training and
development programs are important for an
organization to develop the employee. Training
aims at continuous self-development of the
employees. They are expected to develop
themselves continuously in an organization. When
the employees in an organization are developed
from time to time with all updated knowledge, then
definitely that organization will grow to a greater
height.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

28. BOOKS
1) Beebe, S., Mottet, T., & Roach, K. (2003), Training and
Development: Enhancing Communication and Leadership Skills,
Pearson
2) Bell, R. (2012), Coaching, Training & Developing The Retail
Manager, CreateSpace Independent Publisher
3) Bersin, J. (2008), The Training Measurement Book: Best
Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Practical Approaches
(Essential Knowledge Resource), Jon Wiley & Sons
4) Brown, M., Leavitt, P., Lemons, D. & Vestal, W. (2004),
Corporate Training: A Guide for Your Journey to Best-practice
Processes, APQC
5) Gulati, S. (2012), Corporate Softskills, Rupa Publication
6) Kirkpatrick, D. & Kirkpatrick, J. (2005), Transferring Learning to
Behavior: Using the Four Levels to Improve Performance, Berrett-
Koehler Publishers
7) Neo, R. (2009), Employee Training & Development, Business
And Economics
8) Stolovitch, H. & Keeps, E. (2011), Telling Ain't Training:
Updated, Expanded, Enhanced, ASTD
JOURNAL ARTICLES
1. Devi, V. & Shaikh, N. (2012), ‘TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT – A
JUMP STARTER FOR EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE AND
ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS’, International Journal of Social
Science & Interdisciplinary Research, Vol. 1, No. 7

29. 2. Hameed, A. & Waheed, A. (2011), ‘Employee Development and
It’s Effect on Employee Performance a Conceptual Framework’,
International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary
Research, Vol. 2, No. 13
3. Warr, P. & Birdi, K. (1998), ‘Employee age and voluntary
development activity’, International Journal of Training and
Development, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 190-204
WEBSITES
1. http://redseed.training/solutions/
2. http://www.retailtraining.com/
3. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-corporate-training.htm