Is there life after the training: how to increase the return on training

Is there life after the training: how to increase the return on training

Money spent, training took place, and sellers claim to have learned a lot. But will they apply the knowledge gained in the workplace? What does a manager need to do so that the quality of service really improves, and the cost of training pays off by profit growth? These questions are answered by the director of the consulting company Retail City Yulia Oleschenko and business coach Larisa Nekrasova.

Anyone who had already paid for training for their specialists had thoughts about the profitability of training. After the training, salespeople come to the workplace more or less enthusiastic and try to apply the acquired skills. But the inspiration lasts for just a couple of days, after which the staff returns to their previous way of acting. And the owner who spent the money thinks: either the coach was a deceiver, or they taught the wrong thing, or it was necessary to simply fire everyone and hire new ones. True, there are also more dramatic situations. For example, there was a case when in the six months that passed after the training, all the "excellent students" decisively changed their place of work, and the newcomers who came to their place again reduced the performance of the team to the previous pre-training level. It even happened that after the participation of all company personnel, with the exception of the general director, in sales and team building training, the rallied team led by the deputy director quit in a single impulse and created a competing organization. The training was a success, but only to the glory of some other company. How to avoid such situations?

For staff training to produce the expected effect, it is necessary, firstly, in a timely manner, and secondly, to correctly integrate it into the life of the organization. To better visualize all the necessary conditions, we use the “Learning Efficiency Triangle” model, in which the three key indicators are employee potential, control and motivation. If all three key mechanisms are debugged, training is paying off to the maximum, that is, it gives the expected economic return. Consider each of the three elements in more detail.

Employee potential is an indicator of their ability to grow professionally . An employee with high potential is willing and able to actively advance from their current professional level to that of a remarkable salesperson. By a remarkable salesperson, we mean someone who enjoys helping customers find the right products and services and who loves their products. Ideally, a remarkable salesperson also enjoys their company and is eager to grow professionally, not just in terms of their skills, but also in terms of salary. Essentially, a remarkable salesperson is personally mature, possesses strong self-esteem, and consistently grows in their expectations. A salesperson with low potential, on the other hand, views customers as a nuisance, lacks initiative, is constantly dissatisfied with the company, and has no desire to grow within it. The characteristics of high- and low-potential salespeople are described in more detail in the table "How to Determine a Salesperson's Potential."

Personnel with low potential are not the final diagnosis, but rather a prognosis. If you don’t have the opportunity to hire other people, then you have to motivate those who already exist. At the same time, one will have to start not with training, but with attention to their needs and the establishment of labor discipline, while informal leaders who successfully recruit staff for sabotage will have to either be drawn to their side or dismissed without regrets.

Monitoring. It's a sad observation: employees whose work quality is not monitored can degrade to levels beyond which you face losses and they face punishment. Therefore, don't neglect monitoring simply because you believe your employees value their reputation and a fine isn't as detrimental to them as the loss of self-esteem from poor work. A lack of monitoring is often perceived by employees as profound indifference to their successes and challenges, and even as a consequence of the uselessness and unimportance of their work. This derails all work discipline. Paradoxically, constant supervision under the slogan "I know you, scoundrels!" also destroys this work discipline, as it absolves employees of all responsibility. Service quality monitoring is especially necessary in chains where service doesn't directly influence sales growth, but its absence leads to a decline. For example, a customer at a chain store only needs to experience inattention a couple of times to avoid visiting other stores in the chain, and even to recommend the entire chain to everyone they know in a negative light. Conclusion: employee monitoring is essential, but it must be done in a timely manner, in the right place, and in the right way.

Speaking about control measures after the training, we mean, first of all, such control methods as:

• Monitoring the work of the employee by the immediate supervisor and immediate feedback on what needs to be changed, what skills to refine;
• post-training sessions in 2-3 weeks after training. Here you can control who and to what extent applied the acquired knowledge in practice, and evaluate the result of training;
• external control by the method of "mystery shopper", which keeps in good shape and encourages the seller to work with quality each by customer.

In this case, employee remuneration may be freedom from control in itself. So in Soviet times, workers who were distinguished by impeccability were given the right to put the Quality Mark on their products themselves before the Quality Control Department, and this was considered very honorable.

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Motivation. The core concept of this block is this: salaries and non-material incentives should be clearly and understandably linked to sales volume and/or service quality. Good work is recognized and rewarded—this understanding should be instilled in salespeople as early as the implementation of controls.

Each employee should have a clear chain of events: working according to standards leads to an increase in sales, which, in turn, ensures an increase in salaries and other rewards. If this chain sags or breaks somewhere, the motivation to apply new skills falls. If the rewards are issued as an advance, and not as a reward for a certain result, they cease to be positive incentives, and you will have to create a system of negative incentives, that is, fines for non-compliance with standards.

Obviously, control and motivation work in a tight connection. An employee trained in new skills will endeavor to apply them if:

1. In principle, he seeks to improve his position and increase income in this workplace;

2. He well understands what standards are required of him, and considers them feasible and worthy;

3. It operates in a constant mode of waiting for possible control;

4. He is confident that the people checking him will be objective, and the reward or punishment will be significant and inevitable;

5. He sees that the company notices and encourages employees of all levels and directions, whose work meets the stated standards and mission of the company;

6. Leaders of all ranks set an example for ordinary employees and also strive to improve their skills;

7. Leaders of all ranks demonstrate the same level of attention to the needs of their employees as is expected from employees in relation to customers.

Despite widespread complaints about the drop in the level of “quality of young personnel”, some companies that are actively recruiting students for work still seek good quality work from them. They are achieved through selection according to well-defined criteria, clearly defined work requirements (that is, standards), a well-functioning training and certification system, and also thanks to a corporate culture that sets and maintains a high level of customer-oriented service. We hope that you will achieve this result, and thoughtful tracking of the components of the "triangle" will help you with this.

If you don’t have the opportunity to hire other people, then you have to motivate those who already exist. At the same time, one will have to start not with training, but with attention to their needs and the establishment of labor discipline, while informal leaders who successfully recruit staff for sabotage will either have to win over or dismiss them without regrets

If rewards are given in advance, and not as rewards for a certain result, they cease to be positive incentives, and you will have to create a system of negative incentives