Training Requirements in Private Clubs

All who work in the club business understand that operations are both people-intensive and detail-intensive.?It takes a lot of employees to provide the requisite levels of service and every aspect of service involves many details.?These two facts make consistent, ongoing training an absolute necessity for any successful club operation.?

There are a wide variety of topics that must be taught to both managers and employees to fully prepare them for their jobs.?

1. Leadership Development Training for managers and supervisors – designed to establish a consistent, club-wide understanding and application of leadership skills, which are the driving force behind any organization’s success.
2. Organizational Values Training for all employees – designed to foster a thorough understanding of the club’s values and culture of service.
3. Organizational Systems Training such as Human Resource and Accounting for managers and supervisors, as well as departmental standards, policies, and procedures (SPPs) for employees – all designed to teach the underlying systems that permit the club to operate efficiently.
4. Legal Compliance Training for managers, supervisors, and employees – designed to provide all required training in matters with legal implications for the operation such as Equal Employment Opportunity, Fair Labor Standards Act, Sexual Harassment, and others.
5. Liability Abatement Training for managers, supervisors, and employees – designed to limit the club’s liability exposure for occupational safety and health, food sanitation, public health, and responsible alcoholic beverage service.
6. Departmental SPPs, Organizational Systems, Job Skills, and Service Technique Training for employees – designed to give each employee the knowledge and skill set necessary to perform his job and meet standards of service.

Items 1 through 5 above should be developed by the club and provided across all departments for consistency’s sake; item 6 is specific to each department and should be developed and taught by individual department heads.

What to Do about Training

Private Club Performance Management has described the challenges that standalone operations have in designing and implementing the robust and consistent training programs necessary to enhance organizational effectiveness and member service.?While most operations focus their training efforts on frontline employees, we have long advocated the need for manager and supervisory training in all areas.?As agents of the enterprise, these individuals can do far more harm unless well-trained in leadership, business disciplines, and legal and liability issues.

While there is no doubt that the challenges of comprehensive training are significant, the ramifications of weak, inconsistent training are even more significant in that they impact performance at every level and area of the operation – and may ultimately prove to be a threat to the club’s existence.

Despite its critical nature, there always seem to be reasons not to train.?Often the biggest obstacle to formal training programs is cost – as every hour of training is an hour of payroll for each employee being trained.?But as we’ve pointed out, there is slack and wasted time in every department during every shift, so the real issue is one of organization and the “will to make it happen.”

So, what is a general manager to do, should she want to institute a formal system of comprehensive training??Here are some basic requirements:

• Identify needs.?While every operation may have specific needs, Training Requirements in Private Clubs above lays out the general types of necessary training.
• Develop a training plan based on the requirements found in Comprehensive Club Training – Meeting the Promise of Quality and Service.?Certainly, this can be used as a basis to develop your own plan.
• Establish priorities.?As usual, go for the “low-hanging fruit” – those that are easiest to implement.?You might even use one department as the testing ground for others before full implementation.
• Use On the Go Training.?The use of ongoing, short training topics will help keep the cost of training down, while providing constant reminders of important issues, best practices, and service techniques.?Private Club Performance Management has pioneered the concept of “on the go” training and has developed materials for Organizational Values, Leadership, Human Resources, Accounting, Employee Development and Discipline, Service, Management Disciplines, Food Service Management, and Safety.
• To provide managers and supervisors with a comprehensive and consistent overview of the expectations for their performance, PCPM has developed a customizable Managers’ Handbook containing critical information and requirements for their performance.

Surveying the needs of a formal training program, club managers will realize it’s a lot of work.?But much of it has already been outlined and prepared, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.?Should a club decide to develop its own training materials; the above-mentioned resources provide a powerful example of how it can be done.?

Lastly, PCPM suggests the concept of “incremental progress” to guide one’s training development.?You don’t have to do everything at once.?Make it a multi-year goal; assign tasks, responsibilities, and timelines.?Make a little progress each week while keeping your eye on the end result.?Each step forward will bring improvements.?In time you’ll be amazed at the results!

Ed Rehkopf

For more useful ideas and information, check out the wide range of highly integrated and widely acclaimed Professional Development, Operational, and Training Resources at the PCPM Marketplace Store.