How to Maximize Your Employee Training Effort

If employees feel confident and strong in their duties and are continuously learning new skills, they tend to stay longer. And we all know how important employee retention is.

Effective employee training is perhaps the most important element of a successful rental business. We touched on this in the last issue, but the message bears repeating. 

One primary benefit of a solid training program is it helps with employee retention. If employees feel confident and strong in their duties and are continuously learning new skills, they tend to stay longer. And we all know how important employee retention is.

With some preparation and coaching, employees can make an important contribution to developing a corporate culture of urgency and efficiency. The bottom line is having proper training at your rental business is a very worthwhile investment. 

Here are just a few important points to consider when executing your training effort:

  • Involve everyone. It's natural to think that training should be only for the lowest performers, but everyone, including your star performers, should receive advanced training.
  • Use repetition in your training effort. Proper training is not a “one and done” event.
  • Consider using a professional rental training consultant to help develop your training program and to teach certain key elements of it.
  • Use incentives. Let the people being trained know what's in it for them. Incentives need not be complicated. Also, remember that training itself can be very motivational when performed correctly.
  • Don’t assume that those who have plenty of rental experience are well trained. 
  • Be careful with who you assign as the teacher. Don’t rely on your instinct to have the newly hired employee assigned to just anyone. Do you know for certain that what is being taught is of the quality you need going forward?
  • Be certain that those receiving any type of training are trainable. You might be attempting to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Size up each person’s potential as objectively as you can.  
  • Teach employees how to be safe on the job and specifically, what they must do to help keep others safe. There is no such thing as common sense. Everything they need to know must be learned.
  • Be creative concerning the timing of training and other meetings. Although I conduct most staff training for my clients at their rental businesses during regular business hours, some training experiences are effective when held at a time when the store is not open for business.
  • Develop and use well-crafted job descriptions as training aids.
  • Test to make sure the training “sticks." Retrain where and when needed.
  • Fortify your company with employees who are well trained to help you to capitalize on present and future opportunities.
  • Concentrate on making your employees the very best they can be. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Make superior skill training a priority and make it what differentiates your company from your competitors.
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