Staff training is a necessary investment whenever you change your merchandise mix or you hire new employees. Okay, you already knew that. What many retailers find it easy to forget, though, is the importance of ongoing refresher training. Yes, for those folks who have worked with you for a long time and have heard it all before, regular retraining helps ensure they continue to fulfill your expectations of them.
Ongoing training is especially important about systems that directly affect your profits and losses. Here are some words about this point that readers of Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening might remember from page 37:
"Don't assume that one-time training is enough. It certainly isn't. Give refresher training, including asking each employee to recommit to the standard. Maybe you think employees will object to all this, but the truth is that employees, being people, are more comfortable at work when they know what's expected of them. Even for those employees who don't like the standards, the training, and the refresher training, doing this is a good business decision. That's what really counts, because you are up against the competition. You're a professional.
"Training, coaching, and follow-up also are essential when it comes to systems, such as systems for handling money. Your computer system most likely prints off the amount of money that should be deposited into a bank every day, and then you check it against the bank deposits to make sure the money did get into the bank. So I'm thinking that you have an individual in your store who counts money and makes deposits. If the person doing that is you, the store owner/operator, that's fine with me. But if it's anybody else, you need a system, you need training, you need coaching, and you need follow-up."
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