Observations on what companies do wrong #1
As someone that changes jobs frequently, I’ve had a lot of different types of bosses, environments, job titles, resposibilities, dress codes, and such in various industries. I jokingly say that I know a little bit about a lot of different jobs/industries. Unless the position is just answering phones or just data entry, then there will inevitably be some amount of training. What amazes me about said training is the lack of actual trainers at companies. More often than not someone that would be considered an equal to me facilitates the training. And usually there is a manager around saying something to the tune of “I have no idea what she/he does all day, so that’s why he/she is training you.” As someone with an MBA, this is particularly troubling. As someone that has been made to train new employees, this is particulary annoying.
First, managers should be able to perform every job function that is deemed under their ‘realm’ of supervision. If they cannot, then they have no business being a manager over that particular department/project. Not only does this create the possibility for a problem when the only person that knows how to do something quits with no notice, but it really makes the manager look like a joke, and in essence that translates to points lost on the respectability scale.
Next, all companies should have someone that is an authority figure that is responsible for training new employees. This could be a ‘trainer’ that does the training for every department or just simply having supervisors in each department train new employees in said department.
Next, hourly employee #1 should never ever never be the person that trains new hourly employee #2. Yes, this is a cheap way for a company to train someone, which is both good and bad. It’s good cause it saves the company money. It’s bad because it undermines the authority of the actual manager and it also creates a sort of resentment with employee #1 because employee #1 is having this train of thought…. “I have to train because I am the only one with the knowledge but my pay rate does not represent that, so why should I have to train the new person? Trainers make a hell of a lot more an hour than I do….” and so on. Clearly, this is not what a company wants…one person with the knowledge, and they are angry. I can say this honestly because I have been this angry employee. And guess what happened? I found a new job and quit promptly, taking my knowledge with me.
Now, as the practiced slacker that I am, I prefer places that have trainers. Usually these places have training that lasts from 2-6 weeks, which means 2-6 weeks of getting paid to stare into space. Once, I spent the better part of a year moving from job to job and only staying for the training. I did 6 weeks at a call center, 8 weeks at a hospital, 4 weeks at a another call center, a week in a store and so on. It was great and I highly recommend it for people that are in college. Why people that are in college you ask? Because you won’t have to put any of the jobs on your resume as you can put that you were in school during that time period.
I have also had jobs where there was official training that was conducted by supervisors of the department. This seems to be the most effective training, as these supervisors knew all of the jobs in the department and were highly knowledgeable. However, it provided a bit less in the way of slacking as the trainers were more demanding.
And the worst training - having hourly employee #1 train hourly employee #2. I just started a job yesterday. The person training me is another temp worker that started 3 weeks ago. My training consists of her making me do all of her work under the guise of training me. As you can imagine, this is not starting me off on the right foot with the company. My manager told me that she does not know how to do any of the stuff that I am learning. When she told me this she lost any chance of me respecting her as a supervisor. Last night, after my first day, I came home and sent out my resume in an attempt to secure another position elsewhere.
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