00KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 — With its business and employee recruitment growing fast, home improvement retailer MR. D.I.Y. is placing greater emphasis on human resource development and strives to continuously develop qualified employees with good attributes and integrity.

Its chairman Datuk Azlam Shah Alias said the retailer provides its employees with two main training programmes, the Supervisor Apprentice Programme (SAP) and Manager Apprentice Programme (MAP) to help maintain the quality of employee-customer interactions.

“People with the right attitude indirectly develop to become a good employee. We started SAP in 2018 and MAP in 2020, to train employees with hard and soft skills and leadership to enable them to manage the store and customers properly.

“More Importantly, with the programmes, our employees are able to fulfil their duties and responsibilities at the same time help to deliver company’s visions,” he told Bernama in an exclusive interview at MR. D.I.Y. headquarters in Seri Kembangan here, today.

Azlam added, MR. D.I.Y. has over 10,000 employees nationwide and 85 per cent of them are Malaysians and to date the company has trained 532 employees under the SAP and 12 employees for MAP.

In addition, he shared the success story of its employee, Faris Firdaus Mohd Khalid who joined MR. D.I.Y. SAP two years ago as a trainee and now is a division manager.

“He was unemployed for four months after graduating when he found an opening from our website and was interested to join MR. D.I.Y. SAP. In just three years, he built a career path here from trainee to supervisor, assistant manager, branch manager and now managing 13 stores.

“Because of the right attitude, he has built good leadership skills and always practised a positive approach in delivering the job,” he said adding that individuals are welcome to join the programme as opportunities are awaiting them at MR. D.I.Y.

The SAP duration is three months while the MAP is six months.

Meanwhile, Marketing vice-president Andy Chin said the company received good response from its recruitment campaign held in July this year and hired 1,000 employees in two weeks. It includes more than 600 unemployed people, 200 fresh graduates, and some disabled people.

“We will definitely launch another recruitment campaign by the end of this year. This is a continuous process to help reduce the country’s unemployment,” he said adding that MR. D.I.Y. which has 640 stores nationwide now, is also planning to open another five new stores by the end of the year.

— BERNAMA