Yum! China’s Whampoa Academy Receives Excellence in Practice Recognition

Yum! China’s Whampoa Academy was recently recognized by The Association for Talent Development (ATD) with an “Excellence in Practice Award” in the Organizational Learning & Development category. The award recognizes exemplary practices in workplace learning and talent development. This year, there were more than 125 entries in ten categories. Yum! China was the only foodservice company among the award-winners.

Yum! China is the largest restaurant company in China and a significant part of Yum!’s overall growth strategy. Yum! China opens more than 700 restaurants annually. To keep up with that intense demand, Yum! China must recruit and train more than 10,000 management trainees each year in the country’s highly competitive talent market. In 2012, Yum! China instituted Whampoa Academy, which offers rapid career growth for recruits who are highly qualified with impressive educational backgrounds, but lack work experience and restaurant experience. Whampoa Academy trains these associates to be Restaurant General Managers within a short period of time: 3-3.5 years on average. By the end of 2014, more than 25,000 operations team members were in Whampoa Academy and had received nearly 506,912 hours of learning.