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Do you ever think you’ve received too much, too little, to detailed training, or that your trainer skips around to much? I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career, let’s talk about training today, a much deeper subject than you might expect. Here at WAOC we believe it can be the make or break point to our success. Let’s look at the responsibilities being trained and accepting of that training today. I went out and spoke with a trainer this week, he works in a corporate setting, for a large production facility and is responsible for the training of several different departments and individual task. They have quite a bit of turnover at his facility, a lot of that turnover is associated with the region and the facilities location, the unemployment rate and the availability of like jobs in the area. He stated, his personal belief anyway, is that about 30% of the associates that just walk off the job or never show up for that first day of work aren’t really prepared for what the facility is, like how large and busy it is or exactly what their job is. His point was, and it’s important to remember that he’s in operations, we sometimes form our own opinions about the front office without really understanding their jobs, but what he was trying to ever so politely say was maybe his hiring agents weren’t explaining, or sharing enough information, maybe not really digging in to the specifics of the task with his new hires like they should be or needed too. Another opinion he was holding a little tight to the chest was that he didn’t feel like the supervisors was spending enough time with the individuals before they were turned over to him! His thoughts were that the sup’s should be really selling the new employee on the great benefits of the company, explaining the rules and the procedures in a very positive light, and encouraging them do a great job, that the career opportunities are really all up to them there.
So, a little background on his trainer position. He started with the company as an unloader on the docks, moved up through the production departments, he’s operated almost every production machine in the place at one time or the other and I believe he’d spend quite a few years on the assembly side too, before moving over to the warehouse operations which include both storage of the final products and the shipping side of things. He was promoted to his present position of Operations Trainer about 2 years ago, so he’s been doing it for a while now. He stated he enjoyed his work or duties and that the best part of his job is helping others find their place and be the best at their jobs! I enjoyed my visit with him, it’s always great to be around someone with so much passion with what their doing and his cup is definitely running over with passion.
You know, when were doing something day in and day out, something like a job, it’s easy to get a little complacent with it isn’t it? And a lot of times its easy to get a little frustrated when things aren’t going exactly the way we think they should be, or its easy to be a little judgmental of others even though we’re not sure what their jobs are or have the information to ascertain wither their doing them properly even!
Let’s go back to the hiring agent he mentioned earlier. We know they’re constantly hiring. He shared with us that what he’s hearing from them is the job market’s really tight, and their location is difficult to hire for, oh and there’s several other like jobs in the area. Could this be a training opportunity? I believe that people honestly only No Show or walk out of a new job for roughly 3 reasons. I mean, they’ve came to us to interview, set with the hiring agent or recruiter while the job description’s been explained, and then they had the benefits and maybe health care offerings explained, and we all know any job orientation is going to take a while right. All this is information we need to know as new employees. But was it all explained to us correctly? Did our hiring agent spend the time with us they needed too? Did they answer all our questions? Did they leave us with a visual picture of what our new jobs are really going to be like? Or, have they done this too many times and maybe there taking some short cuts now? Maybe were they trained correctly? That could be one of the short comings. Ok, so my number 1 is Welcoming, have we welcomed our new employee to our team. The first day on the job is stressful. We’ve never met all these people. We may be walking into a 800k sqft building, people running around everywhere, we need to be prepared for that. I hope our new managers has greeted us, walked us around the different departments, showed us things like the eye wash stations, chemical shower, charging areas and went over all the safety rules and the procedures of our new job! We as new employees should be welcomed, we’re there to help ease the workload! Number two is training. Someone has to take the time to show me and teach me what my job is. Maybe more importantly how you want me to do it, your way or a new way I guess is what I mean. I’ll explain more on that thought in a few minutes. And then my number 3 is going to Management. Now I think that sentence can go either way. I mean we may think our manager doesn’t know what he or she is doing and wonder how they have their position, or we can really like the manager but think he or she is just stuck on one way of doing something.
In my experience job seekers don’t invest all this time just to no show or start a new job and walk off after a couple of days? I think as a new hire everything we hear during and after our interview is part of our job training. That sounded weird, what I mean is everything being told to us is going to pertain to our new company and our new task, we can learn something from every new person we meet. And we here at WAOC believe we as new hires own that responsibility to be trained. Look, there’s going to be weak hiring agents, supervisors and trainers. Maybe ours is just having a bad day, maybe there really great at there job but, well, today is just not there day for whatever reason. None of these people are going to be hurt if we just walk away. But we’re going to be unemployed again if we don’t do something about it ourselves. We have to ask those questions if the answers aren’t just flowing from our recruiters and trainers. We’re going to be held accountable for performing our duties correctly, so we need to learn them. When being trained at our individual task ask questions, have them show us over and over until we understand it. Yes, there the trainers but we have to know it, lets hold them accountable to there job as well. I know this is hard, its difficult to say we need to be shown again. But that’s our livelihood, I don’t know about you but I’m not placing that in anyone else’s hands. I spent all that time and my resources finding a job, I’m going to keep it, even if I have to get my hiring agent, manager or trainer to go over and over a question until I understand it. Here’s a good real-life story. A gentleman was hired, really excited about his new job. On his first day he was told by someone that she hoped he liked what he was doing because there was no room for advancement, he’d be doing the same thing for ever. That wasn’t what he’d seen, it looked like a great place to land and kick off his upward march for success. That old Human Nature thing I’m always warning us about kicked in and he began to wonder about it. Luckily a co-worker explained the other girl was just having a bad day, he’d really enjoy working there and stick it out, he’d enjoy it. Today he’s rocking it and I can see him running a department one day!
Another one, along the same lines. An order selector, first day on his own, 4th day on the job came back out after lunch and another selector had taken his assigned jack and the batch he’d been working on because his had ran out of battery. He asked another employee if there was a seniority thing, was he suppose to go load trucks now, what was the deal. The associate told him no, go get your jack and finish his batch. Long story short, him and the guy that took his jack a really good friends now. Things could have turned out differently if he hadn’t asked a question though!
I strayed off topic quite a bit, but I hope I was able to impress upon us all that training involves a whole lot more than the short period of time that our physical trainer is standing there with us. It’s really our responsibility to get trained properly. That’s their job and we can keep them focused on us. We owe it to ourselves! Oh, and then there’s this situation. Let’s say we’re an experienced order selector. We were with company X for 5 years; we could have been there top puller even. We know how to pull and we’re good at it but we had to move for some reason and had to find another job. It was pretty easy, our resume kind of sold us on our new prospect company. We have to let our trainer teach us their way of doing the job. There paying us and we need to do it their way. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a young gentleman, really experienced at his position, he’d worked for one of the largest organizations in his industry. Didn’t have a problem getting hired on at another company in the same industry and I though he’d be an all star in like a week! He never showed up on day 4? I caught up to him the following week and he said his trainer kept making him restack his pallets, he wanted them stacked backwards and that didn’t make any sense. His solution was to quit, he just walked away. His new company loaded the trucks differently than his previous place of employment, hence why the stacking was backwards to him. Instead of conforming to his new jobs requirements his decision was to leave. We as new hires have to treat ourselves as new hires. I assure you our new positions will never be exactly like our old one. Again, its our responsibility to accept our training, it’ll usually be the new right way to get it done. After we’ve done a good job, we can share our thoughts maybe, shoot lets become the boss and we’ll make those changes. But until then, our new job is our now job and I feel we owe it to ourselves to get trained properly, accept that training and become our shifts rock star!
To sum up the word training I’ll reach for my old friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training
Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one’s capability, capacity, productivity and performance.
The definition doesn’t say it’s all on somebody else or that its another’s responsibility. It says developing in one’s self or others. Lets all speak up, ask questions & learn the new way of performing a task. Walking away or not showing up, just shouldn’t be an option, we’re going to have to start all over!
I hope you enjoyed my rants today, let me know what you think about training, maybe share your experiences with the group! Hit up our Facebook or Twitter feed using @whseandops or send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com,
It’d be great hearing what your thoughts on training are!
Until next week, remember our jobs can be dangerous, be safe and keep our shifts safe!