Fostering Quality: How to Train and Inspire Your Employees to Master Their Craft

Welcome welcome to the CleanTelligence Software 2017 webinar series. But thank you for listening in live today. I know you're busy, so I appreciate your time taking the time to join me. As a bonus for registering for the live event today, my marketing team will be producing and sending each of you an ebook going into even more detail on the topics we discuss. I'd also like to remind you that this webinar is being recorded and can be found at www.cleantelligent.comwebinars. that way, if there's any reason you need to jump out, you can still come back and finish the recording later. You can also go there to peruse our selection of all past webinar recordings. Okay, well to start off, I want to introduce myself again. I'm Courtlyn Drakes and I'm the Director of Customer Experience here at cleantelligent. Part of my responsibilities are leading our team of personal coaches on providing software training and business insights, as well as managing and training our frontline support staff. On top of that, I work with clients like you on a daily basis and one of the benefits of working with hundreds of clients is that I hear the common pain points you're all facing in the industry. On the flip side, I hear the opportunity. I also have the opportunity to gain insight into how those barriers are being met and resolved. I chose today's topic of training and fostering quality in your employees for a few reasons. First, I know that the most common struggles of the cleaning industry revolve around training and keeping professional, reliable staff. Secondly, you can't be everywhere at once as hard as you try. And as much as it might seem like it, while you're running to visit clients, you checking your email every five minutes and responding to a never ending barrage of texts, you just can't do all of it. And that means you have to trust your staff to be the face and voice of your company. They need to represent you and what you're all about. In my opinion, your employees are your biggest investment. So this meeting is going to be all about how you get the best return on that investment. As a quick overview, here's what we'll be covering. First, we're going to be going over defining your quality. What exactly does quality mean to you? How can you stand out from your competition? And how do you make sure that your employees are on the same page? Next, employee engagement. Just giving your employees a clear understanding of their job duties isn't enough. How can you help them find passion and accountability in their work. Third, training studies have said that $13.5 million per year per 1000 employees, is being lost because of ineffective training. How can you develop and execute a successful and profitable training program? And last, we're going to be talking about nurturing. Your employees are people, people with basic human needs. It's important that you pay attention to those needs and show your employees that you care. Okay? With that in mind, let's get started. Defining your quality it's important to take the time to really define what quality means to you in your organization. This is where your expertise can help you stand out to potential and current customers. Let's identify some of the places in your business where quality can stem from. First, your company's mission or history. What do you strive to provide to each of your clients? What have you learned in your years of experience? Next Employees As I mentioned before, your employees are your biggest investment. They drive your bottom line and they represent your company. Training and developing your employees and leadership should be one of your highest priorities. Next Equipment and materials Making sure you have the best tools and equipment for your employees goes a long way in helping them to performing their jobs with quality. Be sure to keep equipment up to date and serviced now. Setting standards and spreading the word clearly identify the standards that you expect each of your employees to live up to. Make sure that everyone in the company knows it. Place it where everyone can have constant reminders. And then be sure that management lives by, teaches by, and is always reinforcing those standards. Make those standards your brand and image. What you're known for now Employee Engagement Employee engagement is very important because Gallup polls have shown that organizations improve business performance when they treat employees as stakeholders of their future and of the future of the company. Getting employees to engage in the business has some great outcomes. Gallup found that the most highly engaged business units are 21% more productive. They experience 48% fewer safety incidents. They're 22% more profitable. They have 10% better customer ratings and they experience 37 less. 37% less absenteeism. Those are some great stats. So how do we get there? Number one Hire for attitude? Train for skill? I'm sure you've all heard it before. It's a big industry saying, but it's very important. You need to follow it. So to do that, you need to identify who in your staff right now are your star performance, star performers. You need to dig down into what makes them so great. How do they think? What goals do they have? What drives them? Once you've identified those things, it's time to develop hiring processes that will help bring to the surface possible new employees who match those same personalities. Worry about the skills later. With the proper training, anyone can master the skills required to perform most jobs. You'll also have the added benefit of being able to shape and mold a new employee who hasn't already created bad habits that you'll need to drive out of them. Next, paint a vision of importance. Your workers, they want to feel valued. They want to know that they're making a difference in the company. That sometimes means working one on one with your employee to help them capture the vision of exactly how important their job really is. Have them imagine what the building where they work would look like if they stopped coming in to work there for a week. In an article published on cleanlink.com earlier this year, Ingrid Murray, the president and CEO of Prospect Cleaning Service, related a story of one of those employer to employee encounters. One day, her regular restroom cleaner wasn't able to make it into work. When she turned the task over to another worker who had never done restroom cleaning before, he didn't want to do it. Murray understood that people tend to look down on those who do restroom work, so she used the moment as a teaching opportunity. She said he didn't understand that it's not a job you look down on, but an essential service, just like a doctor healing something. Eventually, he became one of her best bathroom cleaners. Next step is to Increase accountability Promoting a sense of accountability within your company can be difficult. One of the best ways to do this is to sit down with the employee and discuss specifics, determine the who's, the what's and when's of their responsibility. Who will oversee what? What exactly is that thing? When must it be done by the most specific you get with these details, the better? Recognition. Simple gestures of recognition can go a long way toward making your business a place where workers want to stay. Tim Murch, the president and CEO of 4M Building Solutions, told about one of the systems of recognition they've incorporated. Whenever a customer praises a cleaner, the cleaner is given a good works ticket. Each ticket earns the employee an entry into a periodic raffle for cash bonuses, Tim said, who doesn't like to see their name in lights? Recognition is a huge part of our culture, which engages team members. And lastly, and this one is very important, ask for and listen to advice as leaders and policymakers in our companies, it can oftentimes be hard to remember that growth and good ideas don't always come from the top down. Your frontline employees are in the field implementing changes and experiencing the results every day. They they see what's going well, they see what's going bad. There's a good chance that they have a much more qualified understanding of the strengths and weaknesses than you do. Tapping into that well of experience will not only bring about more success and quality, but will also come with the added benefit of creating Buy in for changes that come down the pipeline later on. So do it sincerely. Ask for your employees advice on a regular basis and then just don't hear them listen and strategize accordingly. You hire smart and qualified people for a reason. Pay attention to what they have to say. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there are millions of dollars being spent and wasted on training that ultimately has no real benefit to your employees. So the question comes up should you bother training at all? Yes, you just need to do it in the right way. So let's cover some of the benefits of training. The website Gotohr has an article detailing the benefits of a focus on training. Some of these benefits include empowered employees. Training gives them the ability to learn and act on their own when the need arises and gives you the confidence that they're making the right decisions in representing you have increased efficiency. Repetition creates habit. The more training and practice on tasks, the easier it becomes to perform smoothly and quickly. Next, it can be a recruiting tool. Your chances of attracting qualified hires go up when you offer them the chance to develop new skills in their life and then job satisfaction. The more engaged and involved your workers are in building the company's success, the the better your rewards. And last of all, it's a retention tool. Training instills loyalty and commitment from your employees. They're given the chance to challenge themselves and grow into a stronger person. Don't let your employees just stagnate. Give them things to do. Give them things to learn so they stay active. But now that we've covered the lessons of why you should still focus on training, let's discuss some of the things you should avoid when building a training program. Krzyszto Popov, the CEO and founder of FastTrack, a growth accelerator, wrote an article detailing the following problems with most training programs. First, there's no strategic focus training on things that aren't the most critical to help the business at that time. Next, the wrong people are attending the training. If the people at the training won't be directly using the new lessons, they shouldn't be attending the meeting. It's that simple. And over training and not spending enough time on implementation training on way too many concepts at once and then never referring back to the training is a surefire way to know that the training is pointless and programs aren't interesting and useful. This can be a fine line to war, but it's extremely important when training is boring or when it doesn't apply to the employee's line of work. It will be ignored and forgotten. And last of course is painful, boring marathon sessions. The most effective training comes in short micro sessions, so keep that in mind as you go out and plan your training. Now let's talk about training and execution. Knowing what mistakes to avoid will go a long way as you begin to define your training strategy and execution plan. So start where you are. It's time for a reality check. Reflect on the current state of your business. What's going well? Where are your strengths and what's not working as well as you'd like? Where can you improve? Where do you want to see greater results? These are obviously the places you'll start to focus your training plans. Be sure that your strategy covers three to five core skills and then three to five key activities that will make the execution of those skills possible. Now if you have a tool to compile data that's coming from your workforce, this can help in determining your needs quicker. Cleantelligent has some examples of business intelligence that comes from their inspections Inspection results that come in that help you to identify problem areas quicker so you know where you can focus your training now. Team Effort Leaders and employees need to build the plan together. This can be a powerful activity in ensuring that your training program will be practical and effective. Have the person being trained offer advice on what areas they feel like they're lacking. This can also be a helpful way of showing that the training isn't just about correction, but that the leader sees potential in the trainee and wants to help them develop themselves. Certification and Recertification I recently had the opportunity to visit one of our clients and help them execute a half day training program for all of their area managers learning how to use a cleantelligent mobile inspection tool. One of the key elements of the training being taken seriously was providing certificates to each of the managers as they finished the course. Not only was it an effective tool in generating accountability, but the employees also took pride in being able to display their certificates of accomplishment. It also gave them a sense of confidence in tackling a new job expectation. Now as you see on the screen is PAL Sudden Service. It's a restaurant based in Kingsport, Tennessee that's a Drive thru Dog and Bur chain at this restaurant, you pull up to a window, you give your order face to face, you drive around the building and have your food handed to you, all in the space of less than 20 seconds. On average, mistakes happen only once every 3,600 orders. And in 2001, pals became the first restaurant of any kind to win the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. Pat's turnover rate at the assistant manager level is 1.4%, having only lost seven managers in 33 years. On the front end, turnover is at 32%, roughly a third of the post recession industry level. However, to me, the most fascinating thing about PALS is that they attribute their success to a highly effective training program that involves consistent recertification. Now, the CEO of pals, Thomas Crosby, said, we realize that we are in the education business just like any other school or university. At pals, employees are trained on each skill in the restaurant and then some like how to iron their uniform. Then in every shift, a computer will randomly generate names of several employees to be recertified on a specific skill. Once someone has scored 100% on four recertifications, they become coaches for the co workers in that skill. When asked what happens when he spends so much money on training and then they end up leaving, Thomas's answer is suppose we don't and they stay. Now practice and Measure One of the most crucial steps once the initial training has been given involves leaders keeping up with the employees. As strong advocates to continue practicing and using their newly acquired skills, they should be coaches spending time observing and encouraging the employees and reinforcing the necessity of applying the new skills to their regular routines. Providing and reviewing feedback after the leader has had a chance to observe the employee at work, they should meet together again to discuss the progress of the implementation. Each person can share what they think went well and where things could be better. They can use this experience when planning the next training segment. Now a few tips and reminders that we can go over with employee training. First of all, keep training. Continual development of the employee is key to maintaining job efficiency and satisfaction. One of the things you can do with this is micro trainings. Trainings should never be long and boring. Like I mentioned before, keep things quick with a determined focus. Many companies choose to incorporate these types of trainings into daily or weekly routines or even just going to lunch with their employees and going over it there. Next Cross Train by cross training employees, you're providing flexibility and efficiency for your business. Teach your employees to be confident in sales and customer service, administration and operations. This will Foster team spirit by helping employees understand the challenges their co workers face. And last, build a culture of sharing. Promoting that culture of employee sharing will have your employees train each other. They'll become leaders in diversifying the knowledge that everyone has. This will also build team spirit as well as limit your formal training time and expenses. Another benefit that will come is that absences and turnover will be easier to manage and it will do less damage to the customer relationship. Okay now beyond building a culture of quality engagement and strong training processes, is taking the time to get to know your employees and showing your appreciation for them and what they do for your business. Happy employees are more likely to engage. Simply put, when you take the time to meet the needs of your employees, they will become more engaged in your company. Now as a BSc, taking the time to connect with your employees enough to learn about their goals and dreams outside of work can offer multiple opportunities to boost company engagement. Then of course, find and provide resources for employees to achieve their personal goals. Now Mary Miller, the CEO and owner of Jancoa Janitorial Services, and her husband Tony created the Dream Manager program. This program was then written about in the New York Times best selling book the Dream Manager. The story goes that when Miller did what I mentioned earlier and started identifying the key performers in her business, she discovered a unifying characteristic they all shared. They were all very engaged and in work and in their lives outside of work. They had goals they were pursuing. Miller was curious to see how it would affect her turnover or her employee engagement and satisfaction if Jankoa were to help their employees find ways to achieve those personal goals. In the end, they didn't have to go very far to find solutions. They found there were already plenty of programs and resources in their nearby community. Genco, as part in the process, was using their network of connections to help their employees found what they needed to name just a few. Gencoa has helped their employees quit smoking, buy homes, adopt children, earn college degrees and launch small businesses. Think of how much if you helped your employees do those things, how much that must build the loyalty of the company. Now we also need to understand human needs. Laurie Sewell, President and CEO of Servicon Systems, Inc. Has pointed out. Your workers have a hierarchy of needs, she said. You got some people so worried that maybe there's an illness in the family or significant things going on in their personal life or they're worried about making their rent payment. It's going to be hard for them because the focus isn't going to be there. It's important to remember the traditional employee benefits as well. Health insurance as well as providing a higher than average wage can help the employees feel more valued as well as help you find more qualified individuals. Tom Heveron, President of cbse, has said, what we do and the important service we provide to our customers does not reflect a minimum wage position. The duties and importance of the quality of the work requires a higher paid employee to perform it. We are proud that we have never paid minimum wage for any position and have helped hundreds of our people reach many of their personal goals. Now, Lori Sewell has also said that once the needs are met, then it's time to add the fun stuff company potlucks or picnics. You can also do raffles or Christmas parties or giveaway movie tickets. Providing fun for your employees can be fun for you as well. Just remember, as Suelle mentioned, it's a little like the dessert. It feels good and it's great while you do it, but it's not what's going to be the underlying factor for your employees remaining engaged and happy. Now, in conclusion, let's review what we learned today. First of all, quality Focus. We talked about places your company could focus to improve quality by setting standards. Engagement we took a look at the Gallup polls that show how important promoting a culture of engagement in your company can be, and then we discussed ways to jumpstart that culture. Employee Training we covered the benefits and pitfalls of training programs and then listed the essential steps to keep in mind while strategizing and executing training among your workers. And last, we covered nurturing. We talked about how important it is to build a connection with your employees by treating them well and working to help them meet their personal goals. Thank you again everyone for listening. If you want to check out some of the resources that I went through to create this webinar, here they are and we have a second page as well. Bunch of different resources. Also, as a reminder to those of you listening live today, keep an eye out for that ebook coming your way soon. Thanks again everyone. It's been a pleasure to share with you some of the things I've learned in my role here at cleantelligent. If you have any questions and need to reach out to CleanTeenelligent, you can reach us at these email addresses for sales department salesleantelligent.com customer supportleantelligent.com or if you need to reach out to me directly. My email is just Courtland Driggs. Once again this webinar has been recorded and we will be available to view along with all of our past webinars@www.cleantelligent.com webinars. Please be sure to follow Cleantelligent on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as we like to keep you updated on industry best practices and we share new content on a regular basis. Thanks again everyone and I hope you all have a wonderful day.