Staff training: Reps, reps and more reps

One of the final staff training tips we mentioned in our post from last month involves ensuring that someone learning a role actually has a chance to perform that function.  

Here, the theory is quite simple and obvious: if you do something 100 times, you should expect to be better at it on the 100^th try than you were on the first.  Unfortunately, the simple theory and ostensibly simple practice becomes difficult to execute because various roadblocks keep popping up.  

Here are some of the most common reasons we hear when we find out that a person doesn’t get the repetitions that he or she need to improve:

It’s faster for me to do it myself

In 99% of the cases, the senior person can perform a task a lot faster than the new person.  For example, an orthodontist can probably remove an archwire a lot faster than a clinical assistant who just started.  The speed is not the issue.  The issue is whether or not that is the best use of the orthodontist’s time.  Clearly, the doctor would be much better served seeing new patients, dealing with difficult treatment issues and marketing than performing a relatively simple, entry-level task.

At the front desk, we see this all the time.  A manager will hold on to a mundane task –like balancing an insurance check—rather than properly train and allow a new staff person to try it and make mistakes doing it.  This leads to a corollary to the statement to “it’s faster…” It goes something like: “By the time I fix all of this person’s mistakes, I could have done it myself and my regular job.”  Again, that doesn’t help anything.  Rather than let the person learn, fail and eventually succeed while enabling the manager to focus on marketing, you’ve simply added cost to do the same job because the new person is just sitting around.

We were just soooo busy

This one is generally a challenge for people to overcome and that makes sense.  If the waiting room is packed or people are stacking up at the front desk like planes on a runway, the first inclination of the senior people is to step in and get things moving along.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  My point here is this: rather than jump in right away when a relatively new person is faced with a training system, pause for a second to see how well they respond to a stressful situation.  Some people will absolutely melt under the pressure and you can step in, fix the immediate problem and then reassign that person.  But others will thrive and try to make the best of the situation.  Yes, they may make mistakes and may ultimately need help, but they’ll learn and be much better the next time.

They can just watch me and learn

In just about every aspect of life, watching is nowhere near doing.  Until someone gets his or her hands dirty with multiple repetitions of a task, they simply won’t improve enough to be an asset to your organization.  

Having written all of this, some people will not improve appreciably after the 100^th repetition of a task.  Not everyone is cut out for every task.  Obviously, those folks should be doing something else, either within your organization or outside of it.  But without giving them a chance to try, you’ll never know for sure.