By Eric Sprague C & R Magazine 10/17/2024
Zig Ziglar has an amazing quote about training staff, “The only thing worse than training people and having them leave is not training people and having them stay.”
Zig’s quote hits home for many restoration professionals. Do I invest in people and then fear they leave for a few extra dollars or start their own business? Do I not invest in training and have a team full of low-competence team members I will have to babysit?
Training is a tough subject in our industry. My friend, IICRC instructor Bruce DeLoatch, once said to me, “Restorers complain they don’t have the time and money to train their people, yet they always seem to have the time and money to go fix the problems their people create.” True words by Mr. DeLoatch.
So, what do we all do? How do we balance getting our people trained properly, making sure we are doing it economically, and keeping the people we have invested in?
Culture.
I know, the “C” word. It’s a topic that most people are uneasy with, but it is the key to keeping those high-performing team members. Companies that invest in their culture and create an amazing place to work very rarely are the companies that fear losing team members because they increased that person’s skills. They know they have a good place to work and are more than willing to invest in their people. So, if you want to worry less about losing the people you invest in, start by making sure you have a company people like working for.
Create Individualized Plans
Every team member has different learning styles, different strengths and weaknesses, and varying needs when it comes to training. I once had a mitigation technician who was one of the hardest-working, most competent team members we ever had. The problem was that he did not do well with classroom-style learning and could not, after several tries, pass the WRT exam. So, did that make him a bad employee with no growth potential and no upside for our company? Heck no. It meant we had to get creative with training him in the field and creating our own assessments of his skills. He was a very valuable team member who just needed a different learning path and compensation increases not based on passing IICRC exams, but built upon metrics we created to reward him as he increased his skills. Our industry is full of people who like to learn kinesthetically and may have trouble with classroom learning. Be sure that does not derail their desire to stay with your company or within our industry.
Training Schedules
People want to know what the future may hold for them. Even young adults with no industry experience like to know there is a path for them to better themselves within your company. Embrace this. Create benchmarks built around performance and time on the job to earn the right to receive more training. For example, in my company, a new water technician had to be with us for one year to be eligible to take the WRT class. We did this for a few reasons. One, it gave us time to see if this employee was hard-working, liked this type of work, and wanted to have a career in this industry. It also gave us ample time to train the technician ourselves so he/she would get the most out of class when they did attend. It gave them something to shoot for, a goal to strive toward. Creating an individualized training path with benchmarks and timetables is a great way to increase employee retention, and it also creates a gamification of work for the employee.
Create Assessments
To make sure we are investing in the right training for individual team members, we should create a series assessment to see where they stand on job knowledge and to build the right training plan for each employee. Using artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT4, it has never been easier to create employee assessments very quickly. You can also use one of many personality type assessments, such as DISC, Myers- Briggs, or Culture Index, to steer each employee toward a position where they can use their natural strengths. Implementing DISC assessments in my business was a game-changing event. Knowing someone’s inherent strengths and weaknesses helped me identify the training the team member needed to excel at their job and also helped me identify who would likely excel at each type of job within the company.
In-House Mentorship Programs
There is no more powerful training tool than having a mentor who is great at what they do and willing to help new employees learn these skills, too. However, we must identify the employees who are good at teaching, patient, and willing to train others. Please don’t do what happened to me when I was a young tech and throw the newbie (me) in a van with the “seasoned” tech who didn’t want to have anything to do with training a new person. As I remember it, I was told by my “mentor” to sit down, shut up, stay out of the way and watch him so I would learn what to do. I was treated to a heavy dose of daily hazing, told I was an idiot countless times a week, and never really learned anything until I was on my own and figuring it out for myself after much wasted time being “mentored”. The sad part of this scenario is that this happens every day in our trade, and it is a missed opportunity for many young people looking for a career in restoration. The abuse and lack of a suitable mentor drive them to seek other industries. Mentorship has so many amazing possibilities, but it needs to be implemented with the right mentors and a quantifiable learning plan for each new team member.
This article is meant to get all of us thinking about how our team is trained and how we capitalize on the investment we make in our people. We are all encumbered with the same budgetary and time constraints, but investing in our people and our overall company skill levels will only become more important as this industry grows and matures. Even in the last few years, you could make a strong argument that technology, although wonderful in many ways, has created an increasing need for more training and investment in every position within our companies. In the future, the companies that create the best and most effective training programs will undoubtedly, be the most competitive in their respective markets. Make sure that is you.
