Reinforcement: The Key to Effective Retail Training

By Allan Pulga

Training is widely seen as a necessary investment in improving the quality of a company’s workforce and many companies spend thousands each year on employee training. Some organizations routinely train new hires; others require all workers to attend annual seminars or workshops, wrote Romy Schafer in the Customer Service Management Report.

“Regardless of how employers approach training, many will undoubtedly find themselves addressing training and performance issues over and over again,” she added. “Why? Because they fail to reinforce the training their employees receive in the first place.”

To find out where most companies go wrong, Schafer talked to Michelle Diener, Director of Instructional Design at Corporate Dynamics Inc. in Naperville, Illinois. “There are companies that don’t understand what it means to train people,” she said.

“They believe that if they send their employees to a training class, all their problems will be solved.” Diener says a multitude of factors impact an employee’s performance – organizational issues, policies, procedures, and resources available – all of which need to be considered along with training.

Training is not an event – it’s a process.

“An event is equivalent to a one-time activity that has little effect on sustained behavioural changes,” explains Diener. “It often only has a short-term impact on a person’s beliefs, attitude, behaviour or skills.

“Change takes place over time.”

For training to have a real impact on employees, says Diener, it must be tied to a company’s business objectives and reinforced over time.

• Get more out of your training dollars
• Ensure a long-term impact from training
• Increase company profitability
• Demonstrate to employees a willingness to invest in their development

• Identify the necessary outcomes of training. “Goals should be measurable, specific and tied to the company’s overall goals. This lets you know if and where the training has made any impact.”
• Plan in advance. Companies should develop and implement reinforcement plans up front, at the start of training. “These plans may change of evolve over time, but they should be in place from the beginning.”
• Involve employees in the reinforcement process. Companies should solicit their employees’ input at the beginning of training and throughout the reinforcement process. Front-line employees can provide invaluable customer insight.
• Train managers to coach. “Managers need to be training before training begins and involved afterward,” says Diener. “(Getting the management team involved) really makes a difference.”
• Create individual/team action plans. “That’s part of the training process. It provides a mechanism for accountability follow-through.”
• Recognize and reward desired behaviours. This is the big one. Money talks; so do compliments. As employees consistently demonstrate the desired (i.e. trained) behaviours, a reward and recognition program must be implemented. It’s basic psychology – operant conditioning through positive reinforcement. And it works.