Looking for employee training tips.

[Thurston Fluff]

We own a little mom and pops place and employ a couple people at any given time. Mostly part time high school and college students. Given the high turnover rate of that demographic it is important to train new people as quickly and efficient as possible. Unfortunatly I wouldn't qualify either of us as great at employee traning. We require them to negotiate time frames for deliveries and retain enough knowledge of what we actually sell to give basic answers. For the most part anytime we leave them alone we are always in touch via cellpone to nurse them through most situations but it would be nice to get some ideas on how to improve our training.

[hawing]

Do you have any procedures/instructions in writing? I maintain a manual for my office operations for staff to refer to when I'm not around. Some of it is detail-oriented (like steps to follow certain procedures), other parts less so - like suggestions for how to react when a patron freaks out over a lost book bill (I work in a library).

It takes time to put things down, and regular revisions are a good idea (I try to at least look through each section of the manual every summer), but for me it has been time well spent.

 

I've also developed a training checklist - really out of necessity, as before that I was constantly saying to students every September, "Did I tell you this already?" Brainstorm a list of things you want your staff to know about, organize it into sections ("Customer Service", "Troubleshooting", "Equipment", etc.) and use that as your outline for what to tell new hires.

 

Does that help? My work force is 100% part time college students, so I feel your high turnover pain; and for me, everything gets going in late August to about mid-September - so getting them up to speed quickly is key.

[Thurston Fluff]

yes we have an employee's handbook with policies, proceedures and trouble shooting guides. Our website is also fairly useful when used in conjunction with our price charts. The hardest part and the one I'm least capable to do is teaching someone how to negotiate delivery time frames. This, unfortunalty, is one of the more vital things they have to do. I like the check list idea thanks. We also do self checking tests they can take. I figures it at least gave them a chance to visually see the right answer.

[BMuch]

Backup - You might recall that I own a CPA firm in town. I have the new employees read the employee manual that we developed. But the great thing is that I tell the new employee that they are in charge of updating/maintaining the handbook in Word. This way the employee really takes ownership and the time to understand the handbook.

 

By the way the handbook I'm referring to details each client's procedures and preferences.

 

negotiate delivery time frames

 

Do you have scheduling software or a calendar so that you don't double book each of your services?

 

I went to your website and noticed that the services (characters) do not have prices listed. Is this intentional? If the customers were better informed, would negotiating price/amount of time/amount of other product be easier for your employees and the customers to discuss?

[billyhallfan]

why don't you get some computer based training (CBT)?

[falloutboy]

One thing my company is having me do is create a fairly basic training intranet site. It consists mostly of text with a mysql front end (PHP) for scored company training. All of it so far is based on OSHA, employee theft, breaks and general safety/common sense. They have to re-quiz on each section until they score 100%.

 

Considering that hosts such as godaddy offer hosting plans with php and mysql, the hardest part is figuring out the PHP. I'm going my own route with ubuntu server though so I'm not sure what limitations someone would have with mysql from a webhost.

 

A much easier method could designing some HTML reading documents and then using javascript and radio buttons to "quiz" your new employee after each section, I'm fairly certain a quick search for "javascript quiz script" would return dozens of javascripts you could modify.

[Invader3K]

I kind of went through the same thing recently. I run a small business and recently hired on a manager for the first time. I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but I basically typed out a training guide for him, with spaces for him to fill in info as we went through the different aspects of the business. It was nice because it gave me an outline of what to talk about, and I think having a person write things down helps them remember it more.

[Thurston Fluff]

Do you have scheduling software or a calendar so that you don't double book each of your services?

 

No but we have invoices for each one. Our invoices for the next week are on a delivery wall. The ones further out are in a book listed by date. The part I'm most concerned about isn't double booking as much as booking something that will prohibit us from doing another because of a small time frame. We really can't afford to say no simply because someone had us doing a delivery in an hour time frame when it could have been done any time during the day. Thus the skill of negotiation.

 

I went to your website and noticed that the services (characters) do not have prices listed. Is this intentional? If the customers were better informed, would negotiating price/amount of time/amount of other product be easier for your employees and the customers to discuss

 

It's intentional. The prices vary based off several factors like city, time frame, time of day and character type. We thought about putting a chart or program in the site so they could so they could calculate their price. We didn't mainly because that would allow people to narrow the time frame to as small a size for the price as possible which is the exact opposite of what we want. The delivery part of the site is mainly for local people wanting to get an idea of what the characters actually do. We do have pricing for imprinted balloons and nation wide bulk delivery. That is, relatively speaking, a small part of the business though.

 

We do the same with the handbook that you do. It's nice to know the owner of a actual business does the same.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif BTW Bmuch if you like sailing we have a boat at the highcliff marina. If you would like to go sometime let me know.

 

falloutboy thanks for the ideas. I'll look into it.