Variability is everywhere, it’s part of nature. It’s hard to find apples with the same size or even the same flavor, but still we want our products to be delivered to our customers as uniform as possible and ensure quality. Experiential training help employees to correct their behaviors at the right time and the right place.
Delivering services is even more variable, you have to depend mostly on people to provide them. Small businesses in my experience have a harder time, as they are usually short on people and resources.
Providing appropriate training to front line employees seems to be the perfect answer, but why is it that it is still seem not to be enough? Why is it that we received constantly lots of services poorly delivered?
One of the reasons is because where there is poor service, there is poor training as well, and even worst supervision.
Training middle managers has never been easy. In small companies for example it’s hard for them to have time to stop to train their people or be trained themselves; they have to cover all the blind spots.
A small business in the automobile industry, with only 30 employees, was not able to make their supervisors apply or even read a manual that a consultant had been preparing for over a year. The owner couldn’t believe that even all the middle and top management have been working on the procedures, they were not able to follow them.
A study from McKinsey, “Why leadership-development programs fail” shows exactly the reason why traditional training and manuals are not enough: people are usually not able to apply what they learn in their day to day operations if they daily flow don’t allow them to stop to think, not even famous case studies help. But another study from the same company, “Bringing out the best in people” shows that “experiential learning” is key for training to be useful.
Yes, this is not new. Edwards Deming used to talk about it in one of his 14 principles in “Out of crisis”: Institute training on the job and training aids.
How to start changing the way your employees are trained? Here are four steps, recommended:
1. Mix the training offering: start by training your middle management. Choose two or three main competences for each of them. Combine theory in external or in-company courses, with experience on the job, each competence at a time. A consultant or facilitator is required to help them apply the theory with the real situations, evaluate and correct their behaviors at the right time and the right place. Most adults need a mix reflective observation and active experimentation.
2. Customize the session: Most of the training should be on the individual job, customized for the specific employee with aids, check lists, charts, alarms or whatever is most suitable for them. Capability is built, not just knowledge. It takes time and the costs are higher than collective training, but the results are tremendous. If they get to implement new skills to be able to translate the management objectives to their operations, the performance improvements of their teams will thrive soon. Bear in mind that 85% of the problems are management to resolve. If the training is for front line employees, and the budget doesn’t allow for one on one sessions, at least small group sessions should be held, to discuss real situations
3. Involve the entire organization: every employee should know that this kind of training is being held and that it is available for them if they are in special need. In the long term, not only middle management but front line and also top managers should be able to access to this kind of training.
4. Communicate the status:to be able to get people’s attention, performance before and after the training must be monitored and shared, as periodically as possible. A middle manager working for one of my clients wouldn’t change until I actually showed him the amount of mistakes that he had done in only one month. He was astonished, only that way he realized that complains from other departments were real. Scorecards, bar charts and control charts are perfect to showcase performance measurements. You cannot monitor services during all the process, so you have to teach your employees how to monitor themselves: how to perceive the issues that are produced by variability, react to them, and provide solutions on a continuous basis. Immediate feedback is key, from charts, trainers or even from other employees.
5. Value the program: in order to get the employees buy in, top management and business owners need to be clear in communicating that the new training method is in place, and need to provide the resources. As it was said at the beginning, lack of time is always a reason for lack of training. Priorities should be set in a way to allow for at least weekly individual sessions.
How does training work in your enterprise? Tell us your experience!
Luciana Paulise – CEO Biztorming Training & Consulting
Luciana.paulise@biztorming.com.ar
Luciana Paulise – CEO Biztorming Training & Consulting
Luciana.paulise@biztorming.com.ar
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