Jaguar suspends Olive e-learning contract

British car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover has suspended an online staff learning scheme run by Irish group Olive while the two sides deal with delays in payments to suppliers, an internal circular shows.

Dún Laoghaire-based Olive Group last year signed a deal with Jaguar Land Rover to provide more than 30,000 of the British company’s workers with access to online training courses.

Jaguar told staff in a circular in June, seen this week by The Irish Times, that it had suspended the scheme to resolve difficulties it had encountered with Olive. The note advises workers to contact Jaguar’s HR department if they have experienced problems with bookings, the training itself or “any course providers, who may have contacted you directly”.

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Olive’s chief executive Brendan Kavanagh confirmed the suspension but said his company expected to restart the service once it had ironed out problems with Jaguar by the end of this month.

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The problems mostly spring from delayed payments to suppliers who provided the actual courses to which employees had signed up.

Mr Kavanagh blamed an unwieldy system for managing invoices for those hold-ups. This resulted in the people providing the courses having to wait up to three months to receive their money, sparking complaints.

He explained that suppliers invoiced Olive, which then forwarded the bills to Jaguar for validation. The carmaker then forwarded the cash to Olive, which paid the suppliers.

Obligations to suppliers

Olive and Jaguar have been working to speed up payments. Mr Kavanagh predicted that all outstanding bills should be paid by the end of September.

“All of the suppliers are being brought up to date,” he said. “We are looking for a more efficient way of paying the suppliers.”

Jaguar provides the courses under a benefit scheme through which workers can get training in hobbies and leisure activities.

Mr Kavanagh noted that this meant dealing with large numbers of suppliers who taught anything from “golf to ceramics”.

He stressed that Olive and Jaguar were conscious of obligations to suppliers and intended to resolve the problem before the next cycle of courses began after September.