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National Gaming Academy
It’s gone from a regional triumph to a national success; Colleen McLaughlin, National Gaming Academy Manager, talks to Casino International about the enormous success of the project
Some time ago, Casino International visited Blackpool and the Fylde College, a place of learning well-known for its tourism courses, to see their Gaming Academy facility. Casino International left very impressed, and we recenly caught up with Colleen McLaughlin to find out how the course has grown and improved since those promising early days.
Casino International: The National Gaming Academy [NGA] has had some pretty serious recognition, hasn't it? That's presumably helped you grow and kind of… franchise out.
Colleen McLaughlin: It has. We got a Beacon Award for Excellence, a Centre of Vocational Excellence – COVE. We have been approached by quite a few different colleges and have gone into partnership with two colleges, strategically-placed throughout the country to help us support the gaming industry on a national basis. For example, Genting has bases all across the country and they wouldn’t have to travel hundreds of miles if they wanted to come to us, and vice-versa. The three colleges work together. It’s not a franchise, more of a partnership and we create standardized teaching materials so that the same course is replicated throughout the country.
CI: Where are your colleges?
CM: There is a Gaming Academy at Blackpool. We have the one at North Warwickshire and Hinkley College which opened over 12 months ago, and just about to open is the London Gaming College at Charlton Athletic Football Club. They are looking to officially launch in June this year, although they are teaching courses right now to work through the initial teething problems. They have two croupier courses on the go at the moment, and they are working on the completion of their slot and CCTV area. It is a fantastic facility.
CI: What can employers expect of your graduates?
CM: The new NVQs offer a benchmark, a minimum standard for people within the industry and for those going in to the industry. A prospective employer knows exactly what they will be capable of with that.
People who train with us can work anywhere in the world. We have a fantastic relationship with Carnival Cruise Lines, which offers our students the possibility of completing an 18-week course and then going directly on to the ships as a trainee dealer. That is unheard of. That, for us, as a motivational tool to get people to come on the course, is fantastic. If we train people up and they go straight on to the ships, eventually the majority of them will come back, and they will bring new skills back in to the industry. They may be looking then to become inspectors, or to go for even higher level jobs, but they have still got that basic training.
Probably 95 per cent of the people who leave us, go on to work in the industry. We are getting them all jobs – even in a recession. For example, recently I went to a local casino to discuss job opportunities that are not in our area. We have been contacted by casino managers in the North and in Scotland who want trainee dealers, they know about the Gaming Academy and they have gone to Diane in Blackpool because she does take a large percentage of our trainees. We are going to look at offering packages for our students to relocate up to the areas. General Managers are prepared to do that. You know how they have done with the Eastern Europeans…the same sort of model. They are already offering that to our students, which shows that they are recognizing that the college training is valuable.
It means we are given more and more tools to get people into the industry, through a route where General Managers know that our trainees do know about customer service and are fully aware of the bits of legislation that they need to be aware of. I appreciate that people who come to us, who are new to the industry, can only ever learn a certain amount at our training school, and that a majority of it they will learn once they get out into the job, but the National Gaming Academy is the vehicle that helps them get there.
CI: If you're working with an operator, and training staff that are already in their operations, how does that happen? Presumably you need to be extremely flexible because of the hours your students would be working.
CM: We were looking at getting Genting and all the other major players on board with the NVQ. With Genting it was a case of ‘yes, we’d love to pilot your NVQ with the possibility of rolling it out over the estate if it is successful’ which is potentially 2,000 members of staff. We sat down and discussed ways of making the minimum impact on the businesses – so the majority of the candidates will be funded through the Government’s Train to Gain initiative, so there will be no big cost to Genting for putting all these people through the qualification. The only real cost to them is time off the gaming floor. The model we discussed and decided on was that delivery of the NVQ will take place in the workplace, on the change of shift. We start at 7.45 at night and we finish at 9.45, so people who are on the day shift come off the gaming floor an hour early, and the company gives them an hour on their NVQ and the candidates have to give an hour of their own time. Not only is it showing that the company is there to support them, it is showing some commitment from each candidate to complete this NVQ – it shows that they are willing to do it.
One of the things that I was very pleased about was when they advertised for candidates, they had to select – they had more names that we had places on the pilot. That showed that, even in one casino, there is a demand there – staff want to formalize what they do. And they should be able to, like any other industry. It is a credible industry, the gaming industry. It is only getting larger for the fact that staff can now get an NVQ, with skills and qualifications that are transferable if they do go to another industry…it’s fantastic. The staff have been invested in, and they feel valued.
In times of turmoil where a lot of companies throughout the gaming industry have had, unfortunately, to make redundancies, it’s an excellent tool to remotivate staff, to show that ‘yes, we are going through tough times, but as a company we want to invest in you’. It has never been done before.
The effect of training for motivation is fantastic.
We’re not exactly the average teachers. 95 per cent of us are from the industry, so we understand that we have to be flexible to meet the needs of the industry in which we operate. We take our trainees on and we take them on with the values that they will go into the industry with – that’s what we try to teach them, as well as what the curriculum says we must teach them. It’s all about underpinning the curriculum with the values of the industry.
CI: Tell us about your Foundation Degree…
CM: We have graduated the first cohort of the Foundation Degree in Casino Operations Management, which we ran at Blackpool & The Fylde College. It is a degree that is validated by Lancaster University. Last year the first cohort graduated and on July 9th this year the second cohort will graduate. They are only small groups to begin with, but we are looking at a model that might allow us to offer the degree course as distance learning. Perhaps a model where you have to attend once every three weeks, so you are not having to be in college every single week and would be able to work a rota around that. Some of the modules are enlightening. I have been a manager for years…to go through that qualification and benchmark what I have done against what you should be doing is fantastic. I would have loved to have done it ten years ago…giving you that full overview of the business, and that it’s not just a gaming floor in a casino, it’s the whole business. That’s what it does – the Foundation Degree, for me, is ideal for people at Pit Boss level or Pit Boss junior managers. It just makes you step back a little bit and look at the casino as a business, as opposed to a gaming floor. I think it is a fantastic qualification.
The whole change of curriculum that the staff have had to go through…this time last year, we were told that the courses we were running at that time – the Advanced Diploma in Casino Operations – we were told ‘you are not going to get funding for that next year’. So within five months we hooked up with City and Guilds and People First, the Sector Skills Council, and got deeply involved in finishing off these NVQs so that we could have courses to deliver. Otherwise, the funding would have been pulled – we had to completely change the curriculum. In the long term, it’s a very, very good thing.
