The programme, called "Impacting the P&L", uses a board-based simulation to train staff on the company's financial goals and annual report.
In 2009, courses have already been delivered in France, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the USA and the UK, with new courses to follow in the USA, Malaysia, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and Spain.
Impacting the P&L is a board-based business simulation that involves teams of managers from all business units within Reckitt Benckiser. They are trained on a simulated Reckitt Benckiser business and accounting system, developed by Business Today.
Teams run a number of simulated business cycles, and after each cycle, they prepare and analyse the financial statements of their simulated businesses.
Using Reckitt Benckiser's global internal reporting and analysis system, the same techniques are then applied by the delegates to the real-life Reckitt Benckiser business environment.
The ultimate objective is to empower managers to discover new ways of changing their behaviours and actions to positively impact the Reckitt Benckiser share price.
The course involves up to six teams, each with four delegates, and affords the opportunity for the teams to compete against each other.
Throughout the simulation, the learnings are related to Reckitt Benckiser's business. "One of the most powerful aspects of the course is that Reckitt Benckiser's most current internal financials reports, the latest annual report and interim results are analysed," said Business Today International chairman Gordon Cousins.
"This enables delegates to gain a real understanding of the company's profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, storm ratios and net working capital position."
Business Today has developed a range of experiential board-based business simulations which are utilised worldwide as a vehicle for providing staff with a working knowledge of business and finance.
"A client will give us the go-ahead to custom design a simulation for them; our development team spends time at the company where they gather information and do interviews.
This process normally takes between 3 – 6 months depending on the complexity of the company structure," said Cousins.
"We have designed and customized over 120 different business simulations. These simulations are built around different types of businesses across many industries, from the electricity, manufacturing and FMCG industry to the insurance and banking industry. The simulations incorporate the financial and other business drivers of that type of business," he said.
Large international clients include Unilever, Toyota, Royal Bank of Scotland, Nestle, Vodafone, Daimler Chrysler, Roche, Sandvik, SAB Miller, Anglo Gold, Goldfields, Goodyear, Danone, Johnson & Johnson and Elite Strauss.
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