Creating Effective Training and Development Plans (Part 2)

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 “Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (oh my!): Creating Training Plans with Best Practice Frameworks,” a Clean Show educational session here.

REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCES

Hartsell shares that until a few years ago, he believed UHS wasn’t doing a great job with employee development. The company wasn’t developing leaders and managers in the organization.

“When we had a vacancy for a supervisor, our lowest-level manager, the default was generally to place an ad and try to find somebody,” he shares. “How often are you finding somebody applying to your place or sending résumés with laundry experience? You’re not. So, you’re bringing somebody in day one, and it’s in a laundry. It’s going to be hot. It’s going to be dirty. It’s not going to be that pleasant of a place to work. It’s not going to have all the benefits like Google; there are not going to be unlimited drinks and snacks at every location. We were cycling through.

“We were taking people in and spending 90 days training these people off the street, and they were leaving. The employees coming to me saying, ‘I’m sick and tired of like trying to train my manager,’ and it was a constant cycle.”

So, UHS revamped its leadership positions.

“We had, as a union shop, what we called group leaders in the contract, but they couldn’t supervise other union employees,” Hartsell points out. “It was a really strange situation. We went to the union and said, ‘We want to advance the employees. We need your backing behind it. We need to do away with these group leaders.’ We left them in the contract because it was a contractual part of it, but we just added this new level of team lead, where they would develop them.

“We’d have them in a management training program. We wanted them doing all the management stuff that the supervisors do on the floor. We didn’t want them messing with the computers and the email and all the time-card stuff. All that stuff that takes all the time, and it’s like a vampire for their time.

“We put them through some pretty extensive training and started moving these people up, knowing that when there’s a vacancy in the supervisor role, we take the most qualified, the best production lead, and move them up to the supervisor spot. There was a direct line for advancement.”

Along with that, UHS also spent time doing cross-training.

“We realized we should have people trained in multiple positions,” says Hartsell. “It gives them the opportunity to learn, and they have fun with it because you can get kind of bored doing the same job day in and day out. We looked at every position, outside of somebody feeding a sheet, in our facility and where do we have a backup? How do we train the people on it? We’d spend the time. That’s money you’re spending on training, but it helps fill vacancies when we have them now.”

He shares that, today, UHS’ turnover rate is low.

“It’s been about three to three and a half years since we took an application at the door,” Hartsell points out. “I see it all the time that they come to the front office and ask for an application, but we’re sorry, there are no vacancies.

“Talking to other people, it seems like it’s pretty uncommon to have that situation inside your laundries.”

Rendon shares that, on average, it takes about $740 a year to build training and development budgeting for employees. In terms of time, about 47 hours a year on average is what’s expected per employee.

“On the leadership development side, (Rendon’s numbers) are probably in the ballpark,” agrees Hartsell. “What we found when we were looking at our training is that we were going through a lot of the motions.

“For example, we were doing these safety ‘toolboxes’ to fulfill some check marks to make sure the employee stays safe. I was looking at it one day, four or five years ago. I realized we were doing them on the production floor, and it’s loud, and the employees aren’t paying attention, and we’re literally just going through the motions on the training.

“We were checking the box. We’ve done our bloodborne pathogen training for the year. We’ve done our confined space training for the year, lockout/tagout. But the employees really aren’t grasping it. I put a stop to that.”

UHS now has supervisors do training at the end of breaks when employees are all together.

“I don’t care if the employees are off the production floor for 10 or 15 minutes if you can get in the training,” says Hartsell. “That’s the decision that we had to make. We’re going to have 45 employees in this department off the production floor for 10 minutes, and that’s a certain dollar figure per employee going toward training. But suddenly, our training became a lot more fruitful.

“We put clear standards in some of the training topics. I realized there was a lot of stuff that we kept talking about all the time. It seemed like every two or three months, we had to remind them, please don’t smoke up where you’re not supposed to, don’t have your cellphone on the floor, etc.

“We listed all the stuff that we constantly talk about, and we put them on a rotated training schedule. Every 13 weeks or every quarter, we cover all these topics. The interesting thing is since we started doing this like two or three years ago, it’s been at least a year and a half since we had to write up an employee for something like a cellphone.

“Training is definitely worth the cost.”

Check back Tuesday for the conclusion about starting a program and creating a groundwork for success. Click HERE to read part 1, which defines training and development.