NFIB

Back to School
10/ 17/ 2003

Forget big training budgets, boring teachers and bad slides.

When it comes to Learning 101, small business owners are successfully growing their employees and themselves through innovative techniques involving boot camps, peer teaching, e-learning--even welding.

The key to training that works is figuring out what your employees need, developing a plan, then continually evaluating and tweaking, experts say.

"One of the important things is to get a rhythm to training, to commit to taking an hour a week and have somebody teach something," says Verne Harnish, CEO of the Ashburn, Va.-based training firm Gazelles Inc. And keep it simple. "You don't have to bring in an instructor. Just have an employee read a book, teach what they learned, and talk about what can be applied immediately to the company."

The latest trend in training is one particularly suited to small businesses: delivering learning to employees in "chunks" of 5-10 minutes, as the information is needed for a task.

This highly individualized training method lets employees put the learning to work immediately.

Need convincing? Studies have shown that employees become more loyal to companies that invest in their growth. In fact, the No. 1 retention factor listed by employees under the age of 30 is the opportunity to develop new skills, according to a survey by the University Continuing Education Association.

Take a look at the following training manual of innovative ways small business owners are growing their employees, in order to better grow their companies.

Employees helping employees

Whenever one of the employees at literary publicity firm Phenix & Phenix attends a seminar or workshop, the other 10 tag along--figuratively at least. The 7-year-old Phenix & Phenix, www.bookpros.com, requires anyone attending any learning situation, from a breakfast meeting to a multi-day seminar, to write up a summary of what they took away and present it at a staff meeting or send it out to other staff. It's knowledge sharing at its most basic, and a way the company gets the most bang for its training buck.

Quite a change from when CEO Leann Phenix first started out in Austin, Texas. She would personally train new employees, in addition to trying to run and grow her company. As turnover increased, she realized she was spinning her wheels.

"We would get the same questions over and over, from new employees and interns," she says.

Developing a training manual helped save time and reduce confusion. More importantly, Phenix rethought her attitude toward training with the aid of a personal coach.

"When you start a business, training your staff seems to be one of the last things you do, but I found out that's not a wise decision," says Phenix. "Last summer we turned over almost the whole staff. That was an eye opener. We'd always focused on the client, but I realized we needed to also focus on keeping employees happy."

Now Phenix readily spends to send employees to conferences on organization, computer systems and client relations. Training gives Phenix the confidence to delegate, and gives the company "depth on the bench," so there's always someone training to move up in the company, Phenix says.

Brown Reynolds Watford Architects has taken the peer learning concept a step further. Last year they launched BRW University in-house, developed by the firm's 44 employees to train themselves."It's helped with our retention and a lot with employees' growth," says Jeffrey Brown, principal at the 17-year-old firm, found online at www.brwarch.com. "If you take the time to analyze the skills and talent you have on staff vs. what you need, it's relatively easy to set up an in-house program."

BRW University offers 25 classes on everything from company culture to certified courses with the American Institute of Architects. Classes are held over lunch at the company's Dallas office and are voluntary. Some are run online or by videoconference to BRW's additional studios in Kansas City, Mo., and College Station, Texas.

"There's an overhead to running BRW University, but we feel we get it back," Brown says. "If an employee spends an hour at lunch in a class, they come away with something they can use immediately in their work assignments."

Taking advantage of the big guys

PPS Parking company owner Stephen Paliska has found a low-cost way to train his valets on customer service--slipping them into training sessions conducted by his clients, who are large hotels, chain restaurants and retail centers.

When Marriott Hotels hold a customer service workshop, Paliska will ask to put his employees in any leftover seats, at low- or no-cost. It's a win-win situation, giving Paliska's employees quality training and the client the assurance of having valets trained in their culture.

"We're in a very low margin business," says Paliska, who started PPS 20 years ago, "so we have to save anyway we can."

Think outside the classroom

After being burned by seminars that wasted employees' time and his money, Thomas Croghan believes the best education comes outside the classroom. The president of Group C Design in St. Louis. Mo., now encourages his 10 employees to pursue skills and interests that might seem to have nothing to do with their jobs--such as gardening or welding.

"It lets employees stretch their legs, which has an energizing effect that in turn enhances their creative ability," Croghan says. For a 20-year-old marketing firm focused on helping clients build their brands, nurturing that creativity is vital.

Croghan pays half the cost of classes, developing each employees' continuing education on an individual basis. For computer training, employees undertake the self-paced tutorials that come with some software, rather than sitting in a class.

"I've found creative people are more nurtured when they go and experience creative things that are not in their normal workday," Croghan says. "Ongoing education and exposure to new things is vitally important to keep my staff fresh."

Extreme training

There's no threat of nodding off during employee training at Tigris Consulting. New hires spend their first three weeks in an intensive "boot camp" undergoing real-life client scenarios and learning the culture of the 5-year-old strategic consulting firm.

To keep costs minimal and increase return on this investment, CEO Brent Habig holds the monthly training at his New York City apartment, where he launched the company in 1996.

"Putting this training in place completely revolutionized the firm," Habig says. "It's not just that people have better skills, it communicates to our employees that we're willing to make a tremendous investment in them, and that engenders loyalty."

Today, Tigris has a staff of 75 in offices in New York and Chicago. The boot camp training program was developed in-house, with all managers continually contributing to the structure and exercises. "I firmly believe in building your own program because what you're doing is reinforcing culture and nobody else will know that," Habig says.

Habig doesn't view the three-week session as lost work time because it would be unrealistic to assume a new hire would start billing clients immediately. "There's always ramp up time," Habig says. "We just fill that time with training."

More extreme is the training undertaken by Shadowbox Cabaret, an 80-employee theater, restaurant and comedy club in Columbus, Ohio. Each June for the last four years, employees have split up into teams and undertaken a grueling fitness contest called The Shadow Challenge. Elements of hiking, biking, canoeing and orienteering are incorporated into a 37-hour race designed to develop leaders and nurture teamwork.

"It works for us because we're an ensemble group," says Steve Guyer, CEO and president of the 8-year-old Shadowbox Cabaret, www.shadowboxcabaret.com. "By the nature of our job, we put ourselves on the line every single night onstage. It takes a certain kind of toughness to do that. And because we're in entertainment, many of us are concerned with our looks, so fitness is an issue for us."

The Shadow Challenge is as unique as the theater, where the performers are also the administrators and waitstaff. They perform seven shows a day, 52 weeks a year, in a 220-seat theater that's nearly always sold-out.

"To work the hours we do, you have to make a commitment to the company," says Guyer. "If the lessons learned in The Challenge--don't quit, work as a team--aren't really important to you, then this isn't the place to work. My staff hears this everyday. With The Shadow Challenge, we push people hard so they really test themselves, mentally as well as physically."

Looking outward

For the two-employee JNJ Pest Control and Grounds Care, outsourcing makes the most sense when it comes to computer skills. Owners Jay and Nancy Jorns rely on computer programs for everything from scheduling to developing termite control proposals to creating brochures.

"We can't afford a tech manager," Jay says of his 3-year-old company in Katy, Texas. "But we depend on the computer on a daily basis."

They turned to another small business, the Computer Moms franchise, for help. With trainers who are primarily, but not exclusively, stay-at-home moms, The Computer Moms, (www.computermoms.com ) offers one-on-one computer training for people on their own computers.

For the Jorns, Computer Moms has given them the equivalent of a computer expert on retainer for $60 a month. Whenever they have a problem or need a new program, they give their trainer a call. The fact that the franchise owner lives in Katy and is a small business owner too makes a difference, Jay says. "I've used computer people before, and they say they'll be there in half an hour and two weeks later they might show up," he says. "Computer Moms respects our time."

Prioritizing training

When a drunk driver hit Lee Norman five years ago, the Atlanta small business owner spent 90 days away from his office recovering from the accident. The only way his 23-person business was able to continue running, he says, is because his employees are so well-trained.

All employees at Norman's Georgia Black-Top and Paving (www.gbtop.com ) are given the opportunity to enroll in business-related courses at the nearby Small Business Development Center at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta.

"We keep good employees because of the emphasis we place on training," Norman says. Each quarter, Norman posts the SBDC class schedule in the office. The company pays for any job-related course employees complete. Cost is between $15-20 per hour, and most classes last just a few hours. More advanced classes, which can run up to 11 weeks, generally are $900 or less.

"Several of my production managers are in a Spanish class right now," he says. "It's important that they're able to communicate with everyone on a job site."

With more than 1,100 centers across the country, SBDCs assist about 650,000 small business owners each year. Courses in accounting, marketing and management benefit employees at different levels. Find the center nearest you at www.asbdc-us.org. For small business owners not located near an SBDC, local junior colleges may offer many of the same courses too.

Hiring employees who are motivated to grow and learn not only helps the individuals, but it helps his bottom line too, Norman says. He estimates that almost 90 percent of his business is from repeat customers.

"We have a very loyal customer base. And that loyalty is due to the fact that our employees do a very good job because they're well-trained," he says. "Customers remember it and they call us back next time they have a need."

Electronic learning

Technology can simplify and cut the cost of some types of training, whether by putting new employee orientation materials on a company's intranet, or taking part in distance education. E-learning, as it's called, is an emerging training trend, with about 13 percent of employee training delivered via computer-based training with no instructor last year, according to Training Magazine. An additional 6 percent of training was conducted by live trainers in remote locations.

The e-learning advantages include cost and time savings, according to Sherry Barretta, president of the 35-employee consulting firm VisionCor, www.visioncor.com.

"People learn in a lot of different ways, so it's important to ask your employees what works for them," Barretta says. "That's easier for a small business, because they can get their finger on that better than a company with 10,000 employees."

Charlotte, N.C.-based VisionCor does all its new employee training on the company's intranet. The information is there whenever employees have a question; they can learn at their own pace; and it's easy for the 11-year-old firm to update it regularly.

"It's not stagnant," Barretta says. "There's also a place in there for employees to share information with each other. "

One-on-one programs

If employees don't grow, a company won't, believes Michael Parks, CEO of the Revere Group, a technology-consulting firm in Chicago. That's why each of the firm's 420 employees develops an individual growth plan each year, detailing their career goals and what training they'll undertake to reach them. Employees are assigned a mentor to help guide them.

"We want them to figure out where they want to be a year from now," says Cindy Geier, training manager at the 10-year-old firm. It's provided a great boost to retention for the company, at www.reveregroup.com, to support all levels of training, from classes on presentation skills to college business courses.

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This article originally appeared in the September/October 2001 issue of MyBusiness Magazine, NFIB's member magazine.

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