Triggers for Training - Part 2

Last month, I developed the theme of ‘triggers for training’ – the things that happen in business that cause us to say:

I made the point that our triggers for training are usually negative and that this tends to cause all our training, no matter how good, to be seen as negative. Negative training, or at least a negative attitude for training, will undoubtedly mean negative results – not our chosen final product!

So, what are some other triggers for training?

• Cash shortages
• Excess breakages (more than we can claim!)
• New legislation
• New promo campaign
• Customer complaints
• New market positioning or image
• Manager frustration
• New systems
• ‘Active’ observation of staff
• Poor attitude amongst staff

Which of these are negative and which are positive? We’ll never totally remove the negative triggers but perhaps the answer is to balance the negative with the positive.

Let’s look at the positive ‘triggers for training’.

Whilst new legislation is not caused by our staff doing something wrong, it is, in reality, seen as our industry doing something wrong. So new legislation, such as responsible service of alcohol or occupational health and safety, is still seen as negative. However if you are clever, you can turn both of these around and make them positive.

For example, everything that is pertinent for OHS reasons also has a sound business base. The classic example of this is induction training. OHS will ‘force’ us to do it but businesses that have good induction, for reasons other than just OHS, find their staff are far more accountable and are more capable of doing their jobs.

So, in a roundabout way we come to the first ‘positive’ trigger for training – induction training. In fact not only is it positive, it is expected by the new employee. Consider other times when your typical staff member expects training; there’s not too many that I can think of!

Other than induction training, what are other triggers for training that are positive rather than negative? In my list given earlier you’ll see ‘active’ observation – that process where we are concentrating on watching a staff member and rating their performance. This contrasts with ‘passive’ observation – what we see when we are rushing around doing our work. It is easy to see how this second method could be biased!

Active observation gives us a framework, often called a Training Needs Analysis, that then enables us to work out what training is required without a mistake being made by an employee or a group of employees. When I say that a mistake hasn’t been made, it has really, however the key point is that the staff member doesn’t know it and won’t know it until you tell them! Remember the balance between the positives and the negatives!

Its quite easy to understand how this all manifests itself when you consider wine tastings for staff. Cloaked under the guise of staff training, we conduct wine tastings just to ensure the staff turn up so you can get a couple of points across on some other key issues. You know, those key issues that if you’d mentioned them you wouldn’t have got anyone attending!

You might say that this never happens but I can assure you that it does. I’ve done it myself. We all need positive triggers for training or at least the perception of same!

Back