Creating Effective Training and Development Plans (Conclusion)

ORLANDO, Fla. — Most laundry operators would agree that the training and development of employees is important.

But what are the tangible benefits, and how can an operator create an effective training and development program?

Callie Rendon is the education instructional designer for the Association for Linen Management (ALM), and Jason Hartsell is vice president of operations for United Hospital Services (UHS) in Indianapolis.

They shared their training and development expertise during the educational session “Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (oh my!): Creating Training Plans with Best Practice Frameworks” at The Clean Show here.

PROBLEM, OPPORTUNITY, GOAL

Whether a laundry is looking to start fresh or is looking for opportunities to improve, Rendon suggests using a problem-opportunity-goal method for developing the training process.

“First, we start with the why,” she says. “When you’re conceptualizing training and development or workplace learning either for yourself, a single employee, or a full team, it’s always important to start with why you are doing this. What problem are you trying to solve? What opportunity do you see in the future?”

With the problem, opportunity and goal in mind, Rendon says the next step is defining what success looks like. What does it mean to solve that problem? What does it mean to give that employee that opportunity?

“Come to find out, this is a commonly missed area across all industries and is a huge problem in the training and development space right now,” she points out. “There is a huge lack of data between ‘They just need this training’ and ‘Now they are magically solving things.’

“I would recommend when you have a problem, when you have an opportunity, and you have that goal in mind, ask yourself what percentage of customer tickets I expect to decrease with training? What amount of self-paced e-learning courses or textbooks, or anything, do I want my employee to read every year during their leadership development? How many departments do I want them to job rotate into? Give some kind of expectation as to what success looks like.

“At the very least, start with documentation. That’s a really great place to start because what gets measured gets managed. You can start small and start building your way up.”

“If you’ve done things like HLAC or TRSA Hygienically Clean, you have to provide some basic documentation for the training,” Hartsell shares. “That’s like your bare minimum, and then OSHA requires training as well. Your state may require training.

“What we realized was that for years, we were paying for HR tools with our payroll software and we weren’t even using them. These tools were available to document the training. You could have reminders pop up automatically, reports for when training is due to be recycled, and it is quite helpful to have it. I would say if you do any type of training, you should make sure it's documented and that can be something in your payroll software, your HR software.

“At a minimum, you should save a log of your training and save the sign-in sheet. That’s really important for legal reasons, or for disciplinary reasons, potentially.

“And the flip side of it is, if you define how you’re going to document the training, that also means that you’re finding what you need to train on, potentially, as well.”

Documentation also creates accountability, especially when you think about developing employees, says Rendon.

“It’s one thing to set a development goal at the beginning of the year, but if you are managing that, you are measuring their development opportunities, and you are checking in with them over and over again, all of a sudden you are managing their development,” she says.

“You’re expecting them to do it on their own, but you’re checking in, and you have that data to get back on course, if necessary.”

THE BIG THREE

Rendon ended the session talking about knowledge, skills and attitudes — what she calls the “big three.”

“A lot of times, training breaks down because one of these three is not accounted for or one of these three is misrepresented,” she points out. “When you look at a job function, you can break it down into the knowledge, what the staff member needs to know; skill, what the staff member needs to do; and attitudes, how they should approach their work.

“I’m going to use Starbucks and Chick-fil-A as an example. When you walk into a Starbucks versus walking into a Chick-fil-A, they have very different service models. Starbucks is very laid-back, very casual, very approachable. Chick-fil-A is very attentive, very professional, lots of high-end manners. You can walk into both of those companies and have great customer service experiences.

“But, if you plug an awesome Starbucks barista into a Chick-fil-A and you tell them, here’s the menu, here’s how to serve these orders, but you don’t tell them how they should approach their work, they’re probably going to come off extremely unprofessional in that environment. You might think they don’t know how to do their job. And that might not be true. They just don’t know how to approach their work.”

Hartsell shares that 10 to 12 years ago, UHS noticed a problem they would have when promoting from within.

“When we promoted somebody from within, they would have the same bad habits of the person who just left,” he shares. “These junior leaders learned all of their management habits from that bad leader they had.

“You have to make sure that they have the good example, that they have the good attitude, because it’s not as simple as just magically making them a supervisor or leader and they’re going to know the right thing to do. You have to assume that they have no idea what right looks like. You have to give that example.”

Rendon agrees: “If you have an unhealthy workplace culture, and suddenly you say read Brené Brown, a famously very soft, gentle leader, is that going to necessarily change their mindsets if it’s not reinforced in that environment?”

“It might be a good start, but unless they have somebody to help reinforce that mindset and that attitude, the knowledge of that framework of leadership might not be enough.”

Click HERE to read part 1, which defines training and development, and click HERE for real-life experiences from a laundry operator.