Many people do not understand the difference between education and training. Education is giving information and communicating to your students. Training is about practicing and developing skills. Today’s younger generation of employees wants to be trained, not educated.
The problem is that if we don’t educate them before we train 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 undesirable results!
Mark Flores, Chuck E. Cheese’s chief operating officer, uses the example of macaroni and cheese to demonstrate the difference. We’ve all made macaroni and cheese many times in our lives, but if you don’t follow the instructions exactly, you may end up with macaroni soup, crispy macaroni, or something different than what you intended. So how do we provide education and training to ensure consistency?
Manuals. Booooooooring! We need documentation, but make 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 min max) with tones of visual makeovers. Our employees today are used to watching CNN with a talking video, a tracking message at the bottom, and the weather forecast on the side, all while having four online chats with their friends. Long, lengthy videos lose your 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 all using or testing e-learning. Since it is self-paced, it goes at the student’s speed. Be warned: as we’ve seen with eBooks, reading a book on a PC isn’t terribly comfortable, so keep text to a minimum. Review questions can be incorporated as a checkpoint for the student to progress to the next section. Great way to replace video and print, but not a “workout” yet.
Evidence. We all hate tests! To ensure consistency across tests, keep tests simple and visual (use as many images as possible) and use multiple-choice, ordered, or true-false format to ensure consistency in scoring. Most of our employees no longer take writing or fill-in-the-blank tests. Make sure they have the basics. Do all of your coaches grade tests 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 a test; we had to demonstrate our skills to the authorities before receiving 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 must be validated on the skills needed to do the job and revalidated periodically in the future. Knowing the job and doing the job are two completely different things, and the host realizes it.
skills validation
Having the new employee demonstrate skills for a manager shows him two things: how good the trainer was, and that the employee can do the job functions. We all might think we have the same definition of “greeting the guest” or “upselling,” but when we see our employees in action, we realize it’s general. If we don’t train them through the skill, they’ll just do what they see in other restaurants (which is often not good). Perform these validations every 90 to 180 days to keep standards in mind.
People train people. Just because someone is a good employee doesn’t mean they will be a good trainer. The right tools to educate will help, but the payoff is in the trainer demonstrating, coaching, and validating the skill of a new employee. To illustrate this point to your team, ask your coaches to show you how to tie your shoes or put on a shirt. Act like you don’t know anything about it. The point is that it’s a simple task that we can all do in our sleep, like ringing up orders or making burgers, but it’s incredibly difficult to train someone else how to do it.
Macaroni and cheese anyone?