Your staff’s performance varies
- Some know how to stack shelves faster than others
- Some know how to negotiate a sale better than others
- Some know how to resolve a query more effectively than others
- Some know how to welcome customers more warmly than others
Some variation is helpful — there would be no test and learn without it — but most is just expensive.
The best way to remove variation is to:
But if you don’t take the last step and train and coach your staff, how are they supposed to know what to do?
Plus 1
You should always allow your staff to deviate from the best process if they need to…
Processes make good servants but poor masters ~ Maz Iqbal
But how can they go off piste if nobody has shown them where the piste is?
Plus 2
For advanced users…
Can you tell at a glance who has been trained in what and how competent they are? If you can, the next time it all goes Pete Tong you will know exactly who you can ask to do what.
Rule 8: train your staff
If you enjoyed this post click here to receive the next
Read another opinion
Image by duncan c
James, I would add that performance varies but so does skill/talent, which may be why performance varies. Either way, knowing what skills your staff has or how experienced they already are will go a long way in framing the appropriate level of training, too.
Annette :-)
I agree Annette, people vary, but I think the task of a manger is to help everybody reach their potential, not leave the slower floundering.
Hello James,
One of the dark side of the Customer Experience movement is that the burden of generating a superior customer experience has fallen on the customer facing employees. Yet the investments in suitable equipment and tools has not been made. And even where the capital investment has been made, the investment in operating expenses (like servicing of the equipment) has not been made. Finally, the investment in the people who have to operate the equipment and tools to provide that better Customer Experience almost always is not made. One key part of that investment is in training.
This is bad enough. Yet, it can and does get worse. Where training is given it tends to be about the theory (of something) and superficial. Sometimes the training is so divorced from the real life context that the training is simply not viable in life as lived. Good training is training that is well designed. To be well designed the designer has to understand the folks (and their real life contexts) that are to be trained and be expert in imparting skill (know how) and not just information (know what). Further, good training takes time to create, time to deliver. And is not a one shot training. It has to be longitudinal: train a little, use that training in real life situation – ideally at work, then train some more, use that training in real life……
Maz
Maz, I am, as you are no doubt aware, a man who has read some of W. Edwards Demming.
Your comment reminds me of his quote:
A goal without a method is cruel.