Technician Evaluation Strategy (Identify Core Skills and Deficits) By Jeff Bosch
Why Evaluate: (Tough questions that need to be answered)
Why evaluate your employee’s skills if they are already your employees?
What happened within your market place that has forced you to consider this process?
Experience and Knowledge says: You need to provide or have a training program if:
If your core business provides support or service related products for other companies.
- If the consumer products you support are constantly undergoing technological improvement.
- You rely on your employee’s to be your voice to carry out your company goals.
- Your employee’s performances reflect the image of your core business.
What are the obstacles of providing training?
Skill sets change, consumer desire evolves, services provided expand over time, people fall behind change?
- People
- Education (opportunity to learn)
- Employee Limitations (perceived by individual, or business owners)
- Demands of change (Age, Injury)
- Willingness (Attitude, toward change)
- Personality (Category)
- Motivation (Are they happy with their present capacity)
- Fear (is there a fear of change or failure )
- Multicultural? (Customs, or beliefs )
- Company Policy “Silos” ((Corporate)(Politics)(Structure))(Stores)(Store Employees)
- Is there a willingness corporately to succeed with change strategy implementation?
- Does the change model match the store and employee capacity for change?
- Who is leading the change?
- Procedure or training methods to consider
- Instructor led corporate!
- Hands On
- Instructor led aftermarket!
- Hands On
- Webinar
- Intranet
- CBT
- Self Paced
- Hands On
- Facility
- Location
- Too Far Away
- Staff Coverage to Allow Leaving Store or Floor
- Equipment
- Broken , Missing Parts
- Out of Date
- Unfamiliar with
- Availability
- Who decides what information or essential skills must be mastered?
- Distance to go for training
- Instructor Led or Aftermarket Training Not Offered In Remote Areas
- Cost
- Manager unwilling to allow training due to:
- Missed Budget or store Targets
- Perceived cost too high
- Lost Productivity
- Low Return On Investment
- Corporate Willingness
There must be visible and evidence that the company is motivated to make the necessary changes and to create an educational culture that allows their business to succeed? A work environment that allows the changes required occur.
- Motivation for change
- What is in it for me?
- Wage Increase
- Bonus After Completion
- Personal Satisfaction
- Increase Self Worth
- More Time Off
Is there a commitment to make the time required to change?
Is time the enemy? (Number of Employees that Require Training /Time Available)
What is the expected return on training time investment?
Evaluation Process
Define the desired outcome! What Skills do you want to have mastered?
To identify and improve individual skills and decision-making capabilities that will assist us in identifying essential skill deficits and strengths.
Complete Assessment by an Independent Consultant
Individual aptitudes and skills cannot be determined solely by written examination. Essential skills identification has to be compilation of written testing, skills application through observation, management consultation and principal consultation.
Skills Training Purpose
Skills training should always serve to:
Retain your employees by keeping them up to date
Motivate you employees to learn new skills and methods
Attract new prospects and give perspective employees a reason to join your team.
The approach has to produce customer and associate satisfaction and promote a growth environment for new and improved essential skills.
What you should expect:
The evaluation process is time consuming. The process must be well defined and understood by all participants before implementation to maximize the human resource team effort. The best course of action is to find a balance between training for increasing essential skills and training for information. Seminar based training is usually just training for information and does nothing for improving essential skills to enhance experience. Instructor Led hands on training is the best because it provides a focus toward improving skills along with application of gained knowledge.
Using a training model.
A training model contains course curriculum that incorporates ongoing essential skills with proven assessment strategies. Building a training model is an important step that can’t be overlooked.
Decisions
Breakdown the need into smaller pieces first.
What is your core business?
What is or are your specific goals?
Do you have a business plan?
Is this your first plan?
Have you met your previous goals?
Do you require skills or information
Cost
Compromise
Urgency
Skills training and assessment has to be specific not generic.
At some point in time you have to start your training program. The danger of starting prematurely are obvious, but is it worse than not starting? Experience has shown that a well designed training program is essential to your businesses long term success. One important aspect of training is goal setting. The goal setting has to be company wide. The ownership and the employees must have set goals and targets to reach. If your company or stake holders are new to goal setting methods it is wise to seek assistance from consultants or individuals that you can count on to keep your goals real and attainable.
What are training goals?