One of today’s largest challenges for landscape irrigation industry contractors is attracting and retaining employees. There isn’t any easy solution, but more companies are recognizing that managing employees is a year-round business function and finding individuals with shared values is more important than finding people with “years of experience.” Another realization is that providing training opportunities is critical for staff development, performance, employee retention and personal growth.
Developing and managing training programs are not easy. Training for professionals, who are largely adults, is very complex and often not understood by management in our and other industries. As trainers, we joke about the probably unintentional expectation that some business owners have when they call us for services with an implied expectation that we will “wave the magic training wand” and all of their teams will be “trained.” Once we try and start digging in to developing a training solution, many quickly recognize the scale of what is required. And many of those who do realize the challenge decide to continue living with the problem they are trying to solve.
Let’s consider a few areas that make training programs challenging and some steps to take to make your training programs more effective.
Perhaps the largest challenge is to quantify outcomes. You must have some goals and objectives to steer your training program to an outcome or result. You should have return on your investment, like any in your business, to make it worth it and measure its effectiveness. Maybe it is as simple as achieving a specific level of competency on two-wire systems. Maybe it is more complex, like moving a new hire from zero experience to competency in scheduling irrigation systems efficiently. Either way, it is critical to define what you want to achieve. General “training” usually isn’t that effective.
You must have some goals and objectives to steer your training program to an outcome or result.
Another challenge is that most teams have different levels of experience and knowledge. Consider how many of us have experienced “education.” Most have completed more than 12 years of grade school resulting in a diploma based on standardized requirements of learning. As we advanced to the next grade, there were standards for what was needed to advance. We have very little of that in the workplace and therefore the rules are different.
It is difficult for trainers to work with groups who have learners with skillsets that range from “unsure of how an irrigation system works” to learners who have spent 30 years in the field with experience managing pump stations. It is very challenging to keep everyone engaged and learning in a training session. One way to manage is to engage the advanced learners by having them share their experiences and mentor the less-skilled learners. We can’t expect the advanced techs to be trainers because of their experience, since good training skills are rarely a natural ability and usually take years to develop. However, most can share their experiences, and it’s also a good way to measure the amount of information that the senior techs truly understand and retain.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that professional training and adult learning is a dynamic process. It starts with the presentation of the material, or what many consider to be the “training.” This is followed by practice or implementation of the newly learned skills, as well as needed reinforcement. Then, there needs to be some type of evaluation. This could be as formal as a written test, but it more commonly would be demonstration of those skills by the learner to their supervisor or the experienced mentor. After evaluation, if the learning objective is achieved, the learner moves onto the next objective. If not, the cycle continues with either presentation of the information again, practice or reinforcement.
Understanding that the training process is an investment to achieve a desired improvement in your business helps justify the effort to do it correctly. Everyone in the organization should be on board, especially management. Presentation of the material is the first step. This could be participation in an industry association course, in-house training or online content. You could follow that with opportunities to practice and some type of evaluation to either restart or complete the process. It takes a lot of work. But until we find that magic training wand, follow the steps and reap the benefits of a professional and loyal team.
