Training employees takes resources, often in the form of time, money and materials. Because of this, many organizations choose to skip it or do the bare minimum. But those organizations often misunderstand that choosing not to train and develop their employees comes at a higher expense, in the form of low quality products or services and unhappy or dissatisfied customers.

Employee training can be one of the best investments you make into your business. While many of the tried and true methods of employee training still work, there are new and innovative approaches that are picking up steam.

Benefits of training

Having well trained staff supports your organization’s success a number of ways. Creating consistency for customers is important – when customers interact with your business, you want those customers to know exactly what to expect. Training helps to create standard operating procedures that all employees are aware of and trained to execute. This means a customer could step into locations hundreds of miles apart, but they’ll still know generally what to expect when they arrive. This is how most chain restaurants and retail establishments succeed. When a customer orders soup, salad and breadsticks from the Olive Garden, it should taste the same at every Olive Garden location, whether the customer is in Maine, Missouri or Montana.

While one result of training can be happy customers, another result can be happy employees. According to the State of Employee Training 2015 report from West Unified Communications Services, two out of three respondents say that training opportunities are an important factor in their decision to stay with a company. The study also found that younger employees tend to be more interested in training than older employees, but only by a slim margin, 69 percent of employees younger than 40 versus 59 percent of employees older than 40.

Crew Carwash and the Fast Track Program

For some companies, their belief and investment in employee training can become a recruitment tool, whether it was intended to be or not. That’s the case for Crew Carwash, which has 27 locations across Indiana. In the late 90s, Crew created what is now called the Fast Track Manager In Training (Fast Track) program.

“The program came out of a feeling that we could hire individuals who have demonstrated service-related management experience and make them successful in the car wash industry,” said HR and Recruiting Manager for Crew Tom Wiederin. “The program puts them on-track to become a manager for our organization faster than someone we’re developing from the ground up.”

The program was initially focused on the mechanical side of the business. “In those days, managers were responsible for taking care of the equipment and doing preventive maintenance,” Wiederin said. “Over the years, our director of training went through a training through Disney University. After that, our program’s focus shifted dramatically.”

According to Wiederin, the program evolved to focus more on classroom training and the people side of management. “Our hiring prerequisites used to be about mechanics, but now that’s secondary,” Wiederin said. “People development skills and engaging and building a team is first and foremost. Our program and its workshops were developed because of that refocus.”

Through the program – which does offer relocation packages for out-of-state candidates – “fast trackers,” as they’re called, go through 10 months of training. Most of their training happens at a wash location, where the fast trackers learn everything, even the most entry-level roles. Fast trackers also spend 100 hours in classroom training at the Crew support center in Indianapolis, where they learn the soft skills.

Andy Abbott, a general manager at Crew’s Carmel, Ind., location, went through the Fast Track program six years ago. Abbott had been working for another car wash company when he heard about the Fast Track program.

“The program was a unique experience,” he said. “Ninety percent of it was hands on. The classroom training was more about management skills and interpersonal relationships. The location-level training was hands on, where we interacted with customers and learned how to maintain the location equipment.”

Abbot’s experience with the program was extremely positive. “I’d like to say that my customer service skills before going through the program were top-notch, but I learned a new definition of top-notch in the program,” he said. “Originally I thought, ‘What can they really teach me?’ I had been doing customer service for 10 years in the car wash and restaurant industries. I had always been in the business of serving customers. But the trainers took it to the next level. They taught me so much about how to earn and gain the respect of my team and how to use my team efficiently.”

As fast trackers move through the program, they reach certain leadership steps, with workshops sprinkled in throughout. At the end of each step, there’s a review board. “This is really a checks-and-balances meeting where we ensure that the person has retained what they’ve learned,” Wiederin said. Those who make it through the program are automatically promoted to assistant manager of their location, with the potential to continue working their way up.

According to Wiederin, about half of the Crew general managers are fast trackers. “We establish targets to fuel our company’s growth,” he said. “We think half from within the industry and half from outside is a good balance. Some people in the car wash industry think you can only develop from within and that it’s hard to have success from outsiders. We think there’s a lot of talent out there with people managing in similar industries who could thrive in the car wash business. To avoid or not pursue those people is a big mistake, especially for growing companies like Crew. For companies planning to grow and open new stores, the only way to effectively fuel your growth is to bring new ideas to the table and those can come from the outside.”

And fueling growth is exactly what Crew is doing. While they aren’t doing any out-of-state promotion and recruitment for their program, they are willing to make it worth a candidate’s while. “We’re in growth mode,” Wiederin said. “We’re opening stores this year and need quality managers. Relocating potential leaders, especially those within the industry, and sending them through our Fast Track program is one way to do that.”

The changing face of employee training

Prior to the mass acceptance of computers, the main forms of employee training were on-the-job training and instructional manuals. On-the-job training allowed for an interactive method of delivering a message to learners, while manuals ensured standardized content.

But neither were scalable.

On-the-job training required a number of good employees who could teach others at their location, but became logistically complicated when other locations needed training. Manuals were also cumbersome to update and disseminate. As computers became more easily accessible to organizations and the general public, training content could be updated more easily and frequently, and that content could be distributed more broadly.

With technology’s rapid evolution, learners are no longer satisfied with standard methods of training. In many instances, learners will seek real-time solutions for training needs, such as using Google to search for the answers or YouTube to find how-to videos. While many organizations have been slow to adapt, some are accepting this new method and shifting away from day-long or multi-day trainings toward one-off trainings that explain a specific task. For example, managers may not need to take a day-long training on how to use the Microsoft Excel software. Instead, they may need a one-page document that explains a specific task, such as creating pivot tables.

And many organizations are adopting digital training models. In that same State of Employee Training 2015 report, researchers found that in-person workshops and classroom-style programs are still the most common form of training, but online programs are becoming increasingly more popular and therefore more common. Nearly 60 percent of respondents had been trained using interactive online courses and more than 50 percent had used online resource centers. Only three percent of respondents had used mobile applications, but that percentage is expected to increase dramatically as millennials continue to take over the workforce population. According to research from Pew Research Center, millennials have already surpassed Generation X to become the largest generation in the U.S. workforce at approximately 34 percent. By 2020, they are expected to make up 50 percent of
the workforce.

What appears to be key for most workers and their engagement in and retention of training material is interactivity. In the State of Employee Training 2015 report, approximately half said in-person interactive trainings are effective at helping them retrain information, and 41 percent feel the same about interactive online courses. In order to ensure the training is both engaging and interactive, respondents said the best way to do that was to customize the training to the job function (48 percent), provide the flexibility to move through the training at the user’s own pace (47 percent), provide access to the content after it’s been presented (48 percent) and provide opportunities for learners to interact with one another (45 percent).

In order to have a sustainably successful business, effective employee training is a must. While it does take a commitment of resources, it could be one of the most important investments an organization can choose to make. Providing engaging training creates standardization for operations, including consistency of expectations for customers. It also leads to better job satisfaction for staff. Organizations who opt out of employee development and training will eventually see the results through lost sales or decreases in repeat customers, and increases in employee turnover.