Want to trust your employees to do the job right? Train them like you would teach them to drive.
Building trust in an employee is very much like teaching someone to
drive. You don't just hand him the keys on the first day and let him
take the car for a spin while hoping for the best. You have to show him
how the car works, what the rules of the road are, and how to handle
emergency situations successfully. Only when he can drive you to a
destination without incident can he be trusted to take the car out
alone.
So how do you create that trust with an employee?
1. Start everyone as a passenger.
When a new employee joins our team, he spends a significant amount of
time learning our products. He is taught our computer system and our
order fulfillment process. Finally, he role-plays the correct way to
help customers get what they need. Throughout this training period, he
does not talk to live customers or touch actual orders; instead he is
kept in a classroom-like environment, much like a student taking
driver's ed. Only when he is able to pass a product exam, successfully
enter a test order, and impress me with how he handles difficult sales
obstacles is he able to move on the next level.
2. Put the employee behind the wheel--in the parking lot.
Just because an employee has been successful on the written road test
does not mean he is ready to drive. In phase two of our trust-building
process, a new team member is given real responsibilities, but performs
them in an off-road setting, still quarantined from customer contact.
Whereas before, he was only allowed to enter test orders, he will now
enter actual orders that come in via our website. Because the orders are
real, he must enter them correctly, anticipate problems, and make sure
they are handled in a timely manner. Essentially, he is given the chance
to sit in the driver's seat, but can only drive around the parking lot,
because another team member will be double-checking all of his orders
for potential errors. When his orders are error-free, I trust him to
take the next step.
3. Let the employee take a drive around the block.
Driving is difficult at first because it requires the use of many
skills at once. At this level, the employee must put together all the
product knowledge he has acquired, use our computer system accurately,
and do both with a live customer on the line. In order to make it a
little less frightening (for both the employee and me), a new
employee practices by shadowing a senior rep on calls. The senior rep
takes the order, while the new employee listens in, silently getting his
cues from the customer, and using them to enter the order on his own
computer. At the end of each call, he prints and compares his order to
the order taken by the senior rep. Once he is successfully typing in the
same thing as the senior rep, and several orders are done correctly, he
can be trusted enough to go further.
4. Time to try the open road.
You will never know if someone can actually drive until you let him
do it. As a business owner, I find this is the hardest stage because
there are real consequences. The employee is now in control of the
order-taking situation, but a senior rep will be shadowing him
to make sure the order is done right. Even if the new staffer makes a
mistake, the customer will not suffer, and the mistake can be used to
teach how to make a better choice the next time. This allows me to let
the employee drive, but with the safety of my foot close to the brakes,
just in case. Once the mistakes diminish, and the employee feels
comfortable in most situations, he can be trusted to take the car out
alone.
5. Licensed and ready to roll.
At this point, the employee trusts that he knows enough about our
product, procedure, and mission to be able to drive without a problem
from point A to point B. I also trust that he will be able to do that.
6. Send him on his way.
Once the new rep is out on the road, I fully expect he may have some
minor fender benders along the way. Being okay with that is the final
speed bump in the two-way street called trust.
http://www.inc.com/vanessa-merit-nornberg/build-trust-employee-training-guide.html
No comments:
Post a Comment