Training. Is It Everything?

I learned a lesson not too long ago. We had hired my sister-in-law to come make some extra cash, and be a housekeeper. She is an inquisitive and strongly opinionated girl with exceptional intelligence. Under the guise of being the "new girl" she got the full fledged training under TJ Motel's veteran housekeeper. She was trained hard and trained fast, and found some problems. She brought those issues to my wife, and co-manager, who then brought it to my attention. The event caused the end of certain housekeeping practices, and inspired the policy handbook in the previous chapter.

I took a different approach with it. Instead of folding the staff beneath a written set of rules with a punishment affixed I decided to fix certain policies, and let the housekeepers edit and review all the others. Just like the revelatory training of my sister-in-law, I am not aware of what it is like to clean and reset those rooms. The maid staff are. I call the idea the committee, and it has resulted in great feedback. Furthermore, instead of punishments up to and including termination, I have opted for incentive programs.

Being the slow season I have decided that it is time to deep clean the rooms. I have added cleaning duties to the housekeeping routine to get a more thorough clean until the start of next summer. This includes cleaning the edge of the carpets at the foot of the walls where dust tends to escape the vacuum,  moving furniture and cleaning beneath, making sure all surfaces are cleaned thoroughly, removing cobwebs, and washing the windows, inside and out. Once per week I perform a white-glove sweep of the rooms that were cleaned that day. Should the housekeeper pass the test she will be awarded with a cash incentive.

To accomplish this requires getting off the routine and re-learning how to clean the rooms in accordance with the new policies. That requires training. The staff is already trained, but evolving training is proving to be a strength. It is not always welcome, or warmly received, but it is heeded. Training at the TJ is brief, lasting two to three shifts, after which the new maid is free to do her rooms. What I find is that she misses details, she neglects the stay-overs, and when I send her back through the rooms to make sure the job is complete, often she misses the details again. This necessitates the need for better mentorship. The problem I am faced with is that the housekeepers bring their personalities, attitudes, and gossip to work because I have made the mistake of hiring intimately connected people.

They do not know mentorship, they just know they either like the person or hate her. They either accept her into the fold and then just work silently together, or shun her. That is not helpful nor productive. The goal is to make a training hierarchy within the system. To apply the title "Trainer" to a specific person, who will accept the responsibility to thoroughly train the new girl. I must do this, however, without changing the wages of any employee. Authority therefore, is the incentive. Accountability to me is the consequence. The "Trainer" will be accountable for the rookie's mistakes for the first month she is hired.

Hereafter I have made it a goal to revamp my training approach. This will include the initial training and will follow with the various modules requisite to the maturity of the maid's employment, and the time of year.

The courses I come up with will be refined by committee, and implemented. The results will be felt more in the long term, but the overall effects on the motel will be positive and helpful. This has shed new light on employee development, and on training.

"Surveys of corporate training and development practices consistently have found that four characteristics distinguish companies with the most effective training practices:

• Top management is committed to training and development; training is part of the corporate culture. This is especially true of leading companies, such as Google, Disney, Marriott, and Hewlett-Packard.
•  Training is tied to business strategy and objectives and is linked to bottom line results.
•   Organizational environments are feedback rich; they stress continuous improvement, promote risk taking, offer one-on-one coaching, and afford opportunities to learn from the successes and failures of decisions.

There is commitment to invest the necessary resources, to provide sufficient time and money for training" (Cascio, 2010).

According to the text Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (8th ed.) training is part of the corporate culture. It is part of the business strategy, objectives, and is linked to the bottom line. Stress continual improvement! 

With our small staff the culture is closely knit people working only to work, and going nowhere. Just get the job done, and get out. I am interested in developing these people by giving them a unique and self-empowering experience. This blog is called The Motel Experiment, and so it is. The proactivity of the author is to realize these ideas in an actual business environment, and report the effects.

Since I am "Top Management" in this organization, second only to ownership, I am in a position to develop the culture and implement consistent training routines for the maids. Before I came, I was informed by the veteran maid that there were no meetings. I have them monthly. Now bimonthly. The purpose is simple; to collaborate and resolve, and to train. I understand that change comes slowly, so my implementations will come slowly. One to two additional tasks at a time. I will start by inspecting the rooms and noting priorities. What first need be done? What is the most cosmetic? What is the least? But it will not be the girls doing all the dirty work. As manager I have my own responsibilities.

I will be doing the heavy lifting. I will be moving the furniture, prepping the room after it has been stripped. With furniture on the beds or in the wrong place it will serve as a strong reminder that there are extra jobs that need doing. The routine thereby will be shattered and pieced back together with the awareness that adaptation will be necessary. This requires me to change my routine, and become more heavily involved in my work with the maids. 

Currently I have a daily sheet I keep for the maids which lists which rooms are occupied, whether they are staying or going that day, a comments section, a section to list whether the room has been stripped or not, the time expected to get each room done, and the color scheme of each room. For every check out it is necessary to list problems, needs, or observations in the comment section that the maids will have to take care of. Moving the furniture in the room I will have to write the specific assignments for that day. For example:

Room  Comments

12  go  __vacuum where the desk was and replace desk/same for the nightstands__

The whole season will proceed like this. It will be necessary to get involved with each room, myself, and see to improvements. In some rooms I have noted the curtains are falling off, in need of new hooks. Some carpets need to be shampooed. Walls need to be washed. The list goes on. 

I am in my own training program, learning to do things I never thought I would have to do, including wrestling with an industrial water heater that likes to turn off randomly in building three. But those are my responsibilities.

Is training everything? It is if you want to be industry standard. It is if you want to be benchmark.

Cascio, W. (2010).Managing human resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.