They are on board, now what?

The training doesn’t stop there.

We know the importance of onboarding. Research by Glassdoor shows that great onboarding programs improve employee productivity by more than 70% and new hire retention more than 82%. Those next steps after the initial onboarding process can have just as dramatic of an effect on the long-term success of your organization. LinkedIn found that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if the company was invested in their development, and the American Society for Training and Development’s (ASTD) research shows that companies with good training programs have 218% higher income per employee and a 24% higher profit margin than those who spend less. So, we know the value exists, but now let’s look at some specific ways rental companies can take advantage of the talent they already have. 

Time and money

Rental companies often deal with more complexity than retail and exciting but ever-changing environments where each day is different. It keeps things interesting, but it makes finding the time for ongoing training even more difficult. Additionally, cash is a key concern for many rental companies, especially during the best training times during the slow season. Fortunately, the research by ASTD found that only $1,500 a year is needed to achieve great results. 

You have to think of training like an investment. It costs you something in the short term (time and money), but it is a performance multiplier for the future. The important first step in any training program is to budget time and money and just do something. The 80/20 rule teaches us that 20% of our efforts produce 80% of the results. It’s easy to get bogged down by creating a perfect and comprehensive training program, but in reality, a decent program has a huge impact. You can always tweak and improve the program over time. 

Access to Training

Another common issue for small to midsize rental companies is access to high quality training. This is a complexity that we all deal with, but there are many accessible options. 

Leadership, sales, customer service, and other non-technical training are the easiest to access. There are plenty of online sources that range from simple solutions like making a cheat sheet of top TED talks to more thorough training like full certifications from a Situational Leadership Course by Ken Blanchard Companies.

Technical training is often the most difficult to source for your team. Luckily, you have some invested stakeholders — the manufacturers. Most high-quality manufacturers have training options that can be provided to your team. They vary from workbooks and online resources to multi-day onsite or offsite certifications. The onsite trainings can be particularly expensive or difficult to arrange if you only have a member or two of the team needing training. To help with this cost, many of the state associations and Peer Groups have had members team up to share an onsite training and split the cost among attendings. Teaming up can also be cost-effective for some types of non-technical training as well.

Making it Stick

We’ve all started a training initiative with the best intentions only to look back at the end of the year and see it has run out of steam. The best companies use reinforcement to keep the program alive. What you often find is that, just like a training program doesn’t have to be complex or perfect, the reinforcement doesn’t either. Most companies find great success doing just four things. 

1.     Budget the time and money for training, and make every team member aware of it during onboarding. 

2.     Have supervisors meet quarterly with each team member to set and review progress of SMART goals together.

3.     Make “Attention to Team Development” part of branch reviews and a leader’s individual performance review. (A branch or leader that is not using the training budget to develop their team isn’t performing).

4.     Select a person to be a “Training Champion” to keep a running list of training tools and how impactful they were. 

The Future of Training

While the thought of starting and maintaining a functioning training program can seem daunting, I have good news. Training is going to start getting easier, rapidly. With high speed internet and almost universal access to high-powered mobile devices and computers, two things are going to start to knock down barriers to high quality training.

1.     AR/VR – Augmented Reality (interactive mix of real and virtual environments) and Virtual Reality (completely immersive virtual environments) have the ability to bring onsite training to multiple people anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost. Manufactures are already starting to invest in this technology and the cost to produce content. Likewise, the tools to consume it are quickly becoming affordable for any business. This will be a game changer.

2.     Crowdsourced content is becoming more common. The ARA is already leveraging this with the new RentalU, but I expect the strong sharing community that is already present in the rental industry will keep us ahead of the curve in sharing resources.

Training is critical to the long-term success of your organization. You know it. So, take the next step, pick something and stick to it. A year from now you’ll be glad you did.

*Reprint from August 2020 Rental Management Magazine - by Josh Nickell - https://xdigital.spiweb.com/publication/frame.php?i=668584&p=34&pn=&ver=html5