Training - The Best Tool for Growth

 

 

  TRAINING - THE BEST TOOL FOR GROWTH

There's nothing more demotivating than not knowing what you are doing. The frustration of trying to learn on the job. Imagine an airline pilot who has not been properly trained. Imagine a group of untrained engineers sent out to fix complex machines.

Good and productive training leads to growth in business. Since training is all about preparing people, identifying real needs training and providing for them, would be the  manager’s way of ensuring productivity. You have to ask yourself, how you can provide quality, and customer satisfaction if it is not through well trained people? How can you develop new ideas and products that really lead to growth? It's only through knowledge and skill of your staff. All kinds of Staff be they designers, engineers, office and administration.

 

Money spent on training has a high pay back both in the short and long term. It can  cut out repeat visits, lengthen the mean times to repair, and reduce the use of spares in maintenance.  At the same time, well trained assistants will help increase sales. Development through training is the best strategy for all activities such as service, manufacturing and administration and is a vital factor in the long term survival of an organisation.

 

IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS

 

As with any activity, you need to be specific. You have to identify needs before devising programs to solve your problems and focusing on the real problems. Little point in highly trained people consistently bombing the wrong targets.  Assuming that you have recruited people with the right social and technical background, you use your appraisal interviews to fill in knowledge gaps, and your line and alert calls to target specific repeat problems.

 A list of people should be made with the competence each individual in the key problem areas of operation. For example, if dealing with hi tech instruments  then you have to identify individuals with particular knowledge and skills in areas such as electronics, mechanical, chemistries or physics and software.  A map of a particular department would then show the actual strengths or weaknesses so as to launch new products successfully or to ensure a profitable operation. By using colours to depict strengths/weaknesses, competence levels  from zero to 5  you can then use green for those with 4 and 5  and red for those with 1 and 2 leaving blac those with 3. This matrix of people and skills quickly shows the area of strengths or needs that need to be addressed.

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Below is a typical list of areas where you may find needs. This list is not exhaustive. Managing your training needs means using all resources available be they internal or those provided by external organisations. You need to devise programmes that will cover the following.

 

 Induction

Technical Fundamentals

Communication & Relationships

Trainer Training

Product training

Workshop Practice

User Club Updates

Management & Technical Development

Operational Exercises

 

 

INDUCTION TRAINING

 This is internal training. It is needed at the start. You need to make sure that new people  know their way around your organisation. Every person needs to know the rules and who does what. Procedures in product features and benefits, filling out time sheets, defect reports, expenses and the rest, all need explaining by an experienced individual and backed up by written documents.

 

TECHNICAL 

Here you can use external resources to cover basic material. When learning about new products, people should not have to struggle with the fundamentals. Separate them out. Prepare an explanatory document that covers the basic concepts which either the trainees need to learn or they already know. Test your people before formal courses. You will ensure effectiveness by identifying and covering the fundamentals. Prepare the trainees in advance. No point in struggling  while trying to remember long forgotten basic facts on defining different units.k*8

 

COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS 

Here, you will probably need assistance from external sources to drive the points home. These are a must  for every person be they on the phone on site or behind the counter. Highlight the following key points by using examples. Remember that a person who can communicate well, and relate to customers is also the person that is likely to make the next sale or have the next idea.

Speaking with, and understanding what is being said from how it is said 

Do not make promises that cannot be met 

people are more likely to remember you if you let them down 

 promise less and deliver more 

Seeing things from another person's point of view

 avoid arrogance 

be helpful and understanding

 

TRAINER TRAINING

Use the experience of senior people to help others. Teach your experienced people the skills of training others. Whilst knowledge of the product is important, it is often not enough. Empathy and  delivery is also very important. There are also additional advantages in trainer training.  Staff  are more likely to benefit from practicing the discipline to analyse, plan, and implement the programmes as well as by measuring results. Presentation to, and control of groups, as well as the psychology of learning can serve them well in their personal development.

 

PRODUCT TRAINING.

 This is the key tool for an engineer and should be provided by experienced engineers. The purpose of product training is to know “where to grease and less on how to grease.”  An explanation of purpose with blocks and circuits, with sensor points and expected values will help understanding of signal flows and aid trouble shooting. Reference to the service manual will also be used to identify special tools and techniques for access and replacement as well as complex adjustments.  Usually short programmes with updates and workarounds  tend to be more effective than long winded sessions. The subject matter should be reduced to the essentials. Breaking up the material with periods in the field also helps to refresh9 and retain the information.

 

WORKSHOP PRACTICE

 This is the best way to build up engineer skills in advance.  All practical work should be properly structured with written exercises to reinforce hands on familiarization.

 

TROUBLE SHOOTING UPDATES 

These are informal sessions used to address those repeat problems identified from daily activity reports. Particular problems as subject matter conducted  by experienced senior personnel. These may address multiple problems that could be related to Staff, clients or systems. It may well be that a procedure has not been well understood and is causing problems or it could be a particular customer who has difficulties or an inexperienced service person. When analysing the problems to be addressed you have to establish if they are general, or related to a single person.

 

USER CLUB UPDATES 

These enable you to bring customers up to date and at the same time address frequently encountered problems.  Such programmes are extremely useful in reinforcing necessary customer procedures.

 

MANAGEMENT OR HIGHER TECHNICAL TRAINING 

This is the development route for selected high fliers. By sponsoring them on management or technology courses they can develop within the organisation and beyond.  Not everyone wants to be or can be a manager but management training benefits also those who also choose a technological career.

 

Management Training is a priority of  corporate management.  You also need to prepare people to develop upwards. Management training  helps to  to  understand the political and economic environment in which the company operates. It helps understand the business thinking and the language of corporate finance to properly represent the interests of Staff and customers, making an important contribution to your business.

OPERATIONAL TRAINING

This  goes on all the time on the job but you can derive extra benefit by formalising it. This is not the sort of training given in a classroom. It is getting the whole team to know each other’s role just as fire-fighters do when practising for emergencies.  You simulate an alert and follow through the exercise to identify your weak points and correct them. Take a leaf from the military. Train your force to be an efficient servicing machine by realistic practice sessions. You may have a problem in acting quickly and efficiently when many people are involved in responding to a problem. Spares may not be where you thought they are.  Transport may not be as reliable as you imagined and you may be committed to terms in contracts that could be costly if you fail to deliver on time. Play the role of a dissatisfied customer who makes a complaint, then follow through your procedures in treating the complaint.

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TRAINING ORGANISATION

 

You should run your training activity in a “closed loop”.  First of all you set down your desired values. Then you identify needs by comparing your objectives to current performance. Your training manager becomes the controller receiving the errors and acting to reduce them, and if necessary you go round the loop a second time. You never relax and you keep on inching gradually making small corrections as necessary as part of operational and training management.

 

Training has to be a very highly focused operation, like a laser beam burning through problems. The highest quality standards should be used with zero tolerance for bad planning and execution. The use of check lists will ensure that all individuals involved in preparing documentation, equipment and consumables, spares and facilities will sign off so as to avoid things falling through the cracks.

 

The training has to be conducted and run methodically and   pre-course material should be provided in advance to help people prepare.  This material can then be tested by questionnaires enabling  instructors to fine tune their course for maximum impact.

 

Good results will be achieved by documenting and telling people in advance what will be delivered, then delivering what was stated and measuring the results. There should be no compromise in planning and documenting programmes in advance.  The more that items are written down, the less likelihood of things going wrong. Check lists and documentation; take the strain out of planning and delivering acceptable quality.

 

In conclusion, providing training and people development makes it possible to improve productivity and do more with less. Remember. “It is not the size of your  team -  it's the quality that matters most.”

 

 

 

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