Kia Motors (UK) has won the Learning and Performance Institute (LPI)’s award for People Development Programme of the Year for its academy dealer training.

The award recognises and celebrates the best of the best in the learning and development sector across all industries.

Kia came out on top against shortlisted competitors including Oxfam, DHL Express, Nationwide and SAS Education.

Kia was recognised above the other brands for its ability to communicate its identity to dealers in an engaging way and deliver high standard training courses including e-learning.

Simon Hetherington, director of dealer development, said: “Kia Academy supports the development of hundreds of people working at Kia dealerships across the UK with the ultimate goal of improving the customer experience.
“It’s another sign of the progress the Kia brand is making for us to be recognised in this way.”

Kia now has a dealer network of 179 dealerships in the UK and launched a dedicated training facility in Nottingham in 2012 to provide technical and non-technical training.

In 2013 over 5,000 ‘delegate days’ of technical and non-technical training were.

Last year Kia held its first product master class at Rockingham race track with over 600 delegates in attendance for track time, off road experience and tutorials on how to tow a trailer and technology demonstrations with hands free parallel parking.

Kia also saw 9,000 eLearning modules completed by the dealer network last year. Kia also has more than 115 apprentices in training and plans to increase this further in 2014.