Chapter 7 - Employee Development

Training

The success of your business strategy will be in direct proportion to your investment in training. If you "nickel and dime" the effort, you will get nickel and dime results. However, if you understand and commit to the notion that the training investment is significant, your payback will also be significant. The role of training becomes paramount in achieving the improvements you require.

Awareness

Before training, you must make your employees very aware of the need to achieve total customer satisfaction and improve business results. Rest assured that the launch of any new management initiative is viewed with fear, skepticism and even resentment. You must cover the basics when introducing your program, namely:

• Why improve?
• What is our objective?
• What is the new company vision?
• How will the staff be affected?
• How will this be implemented?
• What are the next steps?

When building awareness and initiating training programs, always begin with senior management and work through middle management before communicating with the front lines. This is critical because management personnel must provide support as soon as the front lines become involved in the training process.

Training is designed, not only to generate new skills and ideas, but also to develop the confidence within your employees that will enable them to challenge the status quo, question complacency and discover improved methods of operation. Without that confidence, your organization will become mired in the ways of the past.

Three different areas of training must be addressed:

1. Technical Skills
2. Sales and Service Skills
3. Management Skills

1. Technical Skills
   
   For most retailers, this is the type of training normally provided (if they offer any training at all). Technical training focuses on the tangible "how to" skills required for the job. Topics often include POS systems, loss prevention and other administrative duties. Without this basic training, your organization comes to a halt.


2. Sales and Service Skills
   
   A well thought out sales and service training program yields tremendous benefits. The challenge is to make it work!
   
   The keys to an effective sales and service training program are:
   • Customize the content to fit your store, staff, products and customers.
   • Make the learning fun, interactive and interesting.
   • Reinforce the skills every day in your store. It only takes three minutes a day to make a huge difference in performance.
   • Make the training part of your daily routines. If serving customers is something that happens every day, then learning how to do it better should happen daily too.
   
   
3. Management Skills
   
   "Management Skills" is a wide-ranging and complex topic. For most retailers, developing these skills will require independent learning through continuing education programs, relevant books and online research.
   
   If you really understand the value of management, you already know that you must become a professional student of "how to manage". Dig in to the topic by signing up for courses or reading books. There's no shortage of information. If you don't, you're cheating yourself and your staff of improved performance!