Think About Triggers for Training

A few years ago, I developed the theme of ‘triggers for training’ – the things that happen in business that cause us to say:
 

I made the point that our triggers for training are usually negative and that this tends to cause all our training, no matter how good, to be seen as negative. Negative training, or at least a negative attitude for training, will undoubtedly mean negative results – not our chosen final product!

• Cash shortages
• Excess breakages (more than we can claim!)
• New legislation
• New promo campaign
• Customer complaints
• New market positioning or image
• Manager frustration
• New systems
• ‘Active’ observation of staff
• Poor attitude amongst staff

Which of these are negative and which are positive? We’ll never totally remove the negative triggers but perhaps the answer is to balance the negative with the positive.

Let’s look at the positive ‘triggers for training’.

Whilst new legislation is not caused by our staff doing something wrong, it is, in reality, seen as our industry doing something wrong. So new legislation, such as responsible service of alcohol or occupational health and safety, is still seen as negative. However if you are clever, you can turn both of these around and make them positive.

For example, everything that is pertinent for OHS reasons also has a sound business base. The classic example of this is induction training. OHS will ‘force’ us to do it but businesses that have good induction, for reasons other than just OHS, find their staff are far more accountable and are more capable of doing their jobs.

So, in a roundabout way we come to the first ‘positive’ trigger for training – induction training. In fact not only is it positive, it is expected by the new employee. Consider other times when your typical staff member expects training; there’s not too many that I can think of!

Other than induction training, what are other triggers for training that are positive rather than negative? In my list given earlier you’ll see ‘active’ observation – that process where we are concentrating on watching a staff member and rating their performance. This contrasts with ‘passive’ observation – what we see when we are rushing around doing our work. It is easy to see how this second method could be biased!

Active observation gives us a framework, often called a Training Needs Analysis that then enables us to work out what training is required without a mistake being made by an employee or a group of employees. When I say that a mistake hasn’t been made, it has, except that the staff member doesn’t know it until you tell them!

One example that we have certainly got used to in our industry is the wine tasting. You know, the session that we run, under the guise of staff education but really to get a couple of other points across to the staff. You’re familiar with those other points; they’re the ones that when mentioned certainly don’t get the staff enthused about training!

You might think that this has never happened but I can assure you that it has – I’ve done it myself. We all need good, positive triggers for training!

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