The Men's Wearhouse Founded in 1973 and now publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Men's Wearhouse is one of North America’s largest specialty retailers of men's apparel, with sales approaching $2 billion. The stores carry a full selection of designer, brand name, and private label suits, sport coats, furnishings, and accessories, including tuxedo rentals. Repeatedly named one of FORTUNE magazine’s "100 Best Companies to Work For," the company operates over 700 Men’s Wearhouse stores in the U.S. as well as

• The K&G chain, with 90 stores in the U.S.
• The Moores chain, the largest retailer of men's suits in Canada, with 116 stores
• After Hours, the largest men's formalwear chain in the U.S., with over 500 stores

The Men's Wearhouse has over 10,000 employees from many backgrounds, and its goal is to ensure that everyone understands and acts according to the company's culture and values so that customers receive the same high level of service in all stores. As the Men's Wearhouse continues to expand, one of its biggest challenges is distributing training content to all employees and ensuring that they understand the information. According to Kirk Warren, Vice President of Benefits and Administration, they used to rely on binders and volumes of paper manuals, which were expensive to produce, were difficult to update, and offered no ability to track who read the material or their comprehension.

The Starcast Solution Now all new employees begin their career with the Men's Wearhouse at their StarCast New Hire Portal, where they watch a video welcome message from George Zimmer, the founder and CEO. They also watch videos from other key executives and take over 50 training courses covering human resource policies, health benefits, corporate culture, company communication channels, and more, all before they ever work with customers. Employees access StarCast from a workstation available for training, usually in the back room of each store. In addition, employees are allowed to access StarCast from home.

Once they have completed their New Hire series, each employee is automatically exposed to a wider range of courses and on-the-job training delivered through StarCast. This has allowed training to become an ongoing experience for all employees that continually reinforces the best practices and principles.

Every Employee Counts StarCast has allowed the Men’s Wearhouse to escape the ineffectiveness and expense of training binders, VCRs, and Cds, which were hard to update and difficult to track. StarCast now captures and tracks all its training with tools that give regional managers, district managers, and store managers the ability to see what each of their direct reports is doing. Employees who successfully complete training on StarCast are then allowed to attend specialized hands-on training at Suits University, the company's training center at its headquarters. Prior to StarCast, SuitsU attendees often arrived ill prepared for the rigors of hands-on training. Now, with StarCast, employees advance to specialized training only after they have passed web-based courses, which has saved time, travel, and money and improved training effectiveness. Employees are now trained quickly, effectively, and consistently.

In the longer term, the Men's Wearhouse plans to use StarCast for training and communication across other divisions such as merchandising, payroll, accounts payable, and travel.

For more information on the Men’s Wearhouse, go to http://www.menswearhouse.com.