Many people do not understand the difference between education and training. Education is about giving information and communicating with your students. Training is about practicing and developing skills. Today’s younger generation of employees want training, not education.
The problem is that if we don’t educate them before training them, it could lead to problems. Think about how you learned to drive. You need knowledge of the laws and then the actual training to get behind the wheel. The same can be said for learning about birds and bees – if the education part is not done effectively, the training could lead to unwanted results!
Chuck E. Cheese’s COO Mark Flores uses the example of mac and cheese to show the difference. We’ve all made mac n cheese many times in our lives, but if we don’t follow the directions exactly, we could get macaroni soup, crunchy macaroni, or something other than what we intended. So how do we provide education and training to ensure consistency?
Manuals. Boooooooooring! We need documentation, but keep it fun! Include tons of photos and minimal text to make it look more like a comic strip. People are more likely to remember what they see compared to what they read, so information retention is better. Also, it is easier to translate into other languages.
Videos. Better than reading for most employees, but should be short segments (3-5 minutes max) with tons of visual makeovers. Our employees today are used to watching CNN with video talk, a tracking message at the bottom, and the weather forecast on the side, all while having four chats online with their friends. Long, wordy videos lose their attention quickly. Watch a segment and practice what you learn. You can watch the next segment after that.
Online. Golden Corral, White Castle, Sea Island Shrimp House, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Chuck E. Cheese’s are using or testing e-learning. Since it is at its own pace, it goes at the speed of the learner. Be careful: as we have seen with e-books, it is not very comfortable to read a book on a PC, so keep the text to a minimum. Review questions can be incorporated as a checkpoint for the student to advance to the next section. Great way to replace video and printing, but not “training” yet.
Tests We all hate testing! To ensure consistency in testing, keep it simple and visual (use as many images as possible) and use multiple choice, sorting, or true-false format to ensure consistency in grading. Most of our employees no longer perform essay tests or fill in the blanks. Make sure they have the basics. Do all your coaches rate the tests in the same way?
All of the above forms of “training” are really just education, yet most managers think of it as training. We didn’t get our driver’s license after reading the book, watching the video, and passing an exam; We had to prove our skills to the authorities before we received a driving license. However, education is the necessary evil that must come first.
Do we follow the same format with our employees? Many companies don’t, we just memorize a bunch of useless information that the guest cares little about and then we’re done. It needs to be validated on the skills necessary to do the job and periodically re-validated in the future. Knowing the job and doing the job are two completely different things, and the guest takes notice.
Skills validation
Having the new hire demonstrate skills for a manager shows you two things: how good the trainer was and that the employee can perform the job functions. We might all think that we have the same definition of “greeting the guest” or “suggestive sale”, but when we see our employees in action, we realize that everything is in all areas. If we don’t teach them through skill, they will just do what they see in other restaurants (which is often not good). Perform these validations every 90-180 days to take the standards into account.
People train people. Just because someone is a good employee does not mean that they will be a good coach. The right tools to educate will help, but the payoff is in the trainer demonstrating, training, and validating a new hire’s skill. To illustrate this point for your team, ask your coaches to teach you how to tie your shoes or put on a shirt. Act like you don’t know anything about it. The point is, it’s a simple task that we can all do in our sleep, like ordering or making burgers, but it’s incredibly difficult to train someone else to do it.
Macaroni and cheese, anyone?
