bidding & estimating Beyond I In our lifetime it seems as if the demands on management, produc-tion workers and vendors to get more done in less time and with less money has never been greater. These are the realities of a changing world and a maturing indus-try, economy and nation. This trend has been evolving over the last 30 years and I don’t expect it will stop or reverse itself in the future. In fact, I would expect the process to continue to accelerate as we find ways to deal with increasing demands and expectations. Our greatest challenge won’t be in getting the work done, but in preparing ourselves to cope with the speed of change. The only real opportunity for success in this effort is to hire, train and retain the best workers available. Training In 2013 And Boldly going where no cleaning professional has gone before. By: Bill Griffin stead of hands on practice performing the tasks we want properly executed. If you want effective learning of manual skills to take place, quit talking and have participants do what you want them to learn. Within minutes, get people up out of their chairs — better yet, get rid of the chairs — and start with small groups performing the tasks the way you want them done. Training The Trainers Train your best workers to be your best trainers. Same for testing, keep it short and focus on a minimal amount of need to know information with the primary emphasis on validating proper performance and not on reciting information. Secondarily, see if participants can correctly answer basic need to know questions about the critical aspects of the tasks being per-formed. What you will find is that everyone will enjoy the training more and will learn what they need to know to do the job right. Lastly, support the learning experience with one-on-one ques-tions, discussion and performance observations in two days, two weeks and two months after the initial training and retention of skills development and information will be maximized. Who Needs Training? Everyone: Workers, vendors, management and customers; there are no exceptions or exclusions. If an employee is involved in any way with the services you pro-vide or are responsible for, in a building or facility, he or she needs ongoing training. When it comes to cleaning workers, we are sometimes hesitant to provide training because an employee may leave us once we have made an investment in them. In reality, the cost is much higher when retaining an untrained worker. Although there are costs to providing training, they are minimal when compared to the costs of inefficient labor and the wasted management time we willingly and endlessly spend on untrained workers. Certification Third-party certification of skills is becoming expected and com-monplace in more advanced industries and will, over time, be a re-quirement for cleaning professionals. True high level certification should be based on a balanced ap-proach between being able to recite basic critical information and the actual ability to properly perform required tasks. You can expect to see continued growth in science-based edu-cation technology that enables students to learn at their own pace without costly or inconvenient travel. In the next couple of years, the cellphone and other mobile de-vices will replace the computer as our link to an unlimited world of information. The size and intrusiveness of these enabling devices will continue to shrink. In this century or the next, knowledge and skills will be trans-ferred, instead of learned. Some may see this as science fiction, but I can assure you that processes are well underway today to make this and other unimagi-nable advances, tomorrow’s reality. CM Effective Training Research is showing that we have it all wrong. We often think of effective training as taking place in a classroom with students in chairs listening and an expert upfront talking or showing a PowerPoint or video. However, what we are finding is that self-paced, group lead, hands-on learning experiences are far more effective than any classroom program. Think about it. What do you want people to learn? Is it how to sit in a chair, listen and answer questions? Or, is it to be able to properly perform tasks in the real-world work envi-ronment? If you want people to be able to properly perform tasks, the em-phasis and practice must be on actually performing the task and not on listening to information about how to perform tasks. Some information must be transferred to the worker, but more often than not, we have it totally backwards. In most training programs we focus on information transfer, in-Bill Griffin is president of the International Custodial Advisors Network (ICAN) and owner of Cleaning Consultant Services Inc. Comments and questions about bidding and estimating are encouraged: (206) 849-0179; [email protected]. www.cmmonline.com 45
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