Posted on February 02 2020

The start of the year is the perfect time to train your staff. With families in back-to-school mode, Operators will possibly experience reduced foot fall in your location resulting in increased downtime, giving you the chance to get everyone on the same page after a busy year-end.

Employee Turnover will probably always remain a challenge within our industry. Some high school kids only want a summer job, while others will stay with you throughout the year. The New Year is a great time to invest in staff that will stay with you over a longer period of time — entry-level employees and managerial staff, alike.

According to Your Organization Needs a Learning Ecosystem, an article by Harvard Business Review, “Like a biological ecosystem, organizations are either growing or they’re dying. And organizations grow when their employees are learning. So if you want a high-growth organization, you need to create a learning ecosystem to support high-growth individuals — to expose them to new and challenging opportunities before their roles become stale.”

Training can help prevent high employee attrition rates and that’s essential because the average cost to replace an employee is about 30 percent of his or her annual compensation. In the long run, efficiently training your staff can save you quite a bit of money and productivity costs.

Here are 4 tips for creating a learning culture at your Operation:

• Systemize training: By incorporating training into your regular employee requirements, you show your organization that they are a priority. Is the ‘redemption space’ a topic in your location’s on-the-job training? Think about how you can incorporate regular learning outside of the employee’s initial job orientation process. Maybe employees can ‘shadow’ someone working in another area of your centre once per quarter. Maybe you ask employees to attend a customer service workshop once per year. By systematizing training, employees will be more engaged in their respective roles.

 

• Create a reward system: This can be as simple as giving a shout out at staff meetings to everyone who has been engaging in employee training and development. It can be as also be as generous as offering paid time off for specific training completions or milestones. By recognizing employee participation in training, Operators will motivate others to follow suit.

 

• Deliver at the right time: Requiring someone to complete training while on break is probably not the best option. This creates the potential for employees to resent learning time. Consider how you can make training available during paid time. If you can’t make training available during working hours, consider how you can increase participation either by making it available at any time (online) or by compensating (financially or otherwise) for time spent completing learning objectives.

 

• Identify training experts: Can you identify subject matter experts within your current staff roster? Who would you turn to for questions about your redemption program, game maintenance, customer service at the front counter, waiting tables, etc.? Allow these team members to teach their peers and provide refreshers on content regularly. Giving these experts ownership over training content will save you time and will increase the likelihood for peer interest in learning and adoption.

Credits: Tabatha Bender, Redemption Plus

Original Article sourced from: www.baytekent.com