Page 21 - GBC Spring 2021 English

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Expert Q&A:
What you need to know now to boost staff training
What are the common challenges facing clubs relative to training?
For the club industry, operations are very seasonal.
At the beginning of the season, you onboard a lot of new staff that range in experience and age. For some new hires,
it may be their first job while others are coming back for their second or third year.
It’s easy to underestimate how challenging that can be but at Westmount, we can onboard close to 80 people, if not more, in the span of a few weeks. That’s employee agreements, paperwork, and training all executed within a very short time and limited resources. It’s a lot to manage
and it’s critical to operations that a solid training plan is executed.
Any new challenges this year?
This season, clubs face the additional challenge of not being able to rely on in-person training, given the restrictions relative to COVID-19.
How did you improve your training program at Westmount?
We were using training courses for mandatory topics like WHMIS and Workplace Violence and Harassment. That was working well enough, but for role-based training, each manager would be responsible for training in-person, meaning job shadowing and guiding people through tasks.
Using job shadowing for training has many limitations. Staff can miss a shift and miss training, the quality of training is dependent on whichever supervisor
is on that day and ultimately, there’s no standardization of service.
We moved all training to Club Core. The platform includes role-specific courses designed for the club industry, which made it a compelling solution for us.
Managers are still responsible for their team training and ensuring their staff are skilled in their role, but now we have a system that automates and streamlines the process and makes tracking and accountability easy.
The ultimate goal of our training program is to help staff meet the expectations of club management and our members, and be confident in their role.
What do you look for in a platform for training and course content?
First off, the Learning Management Platform must be easy, and it must be accessible on a mobile device so that employees can do it on a phone or tablet.
I’m also looking for training content to be engaging and specific to the industry.
Traceability is another big consideration: Does the system automatically send reminders for the team to complete
their training? Does it allow managers
to have full visibility of their roster’s skill base? Does it allow for training record management?
with Lyna Jones, Human Resource Manager Westmount G&CC
Do you have tips for clubs that need to limit in-person training next season?
My best tip is to emphasize pre-training. Employees want to know what they’re getting into before they start their role.
Clubs can be overwhelming, so we implemented a video welcome complete with a walk-through of our location including where to park and where the staff entrance is. Sometimes employees have very basic questions but are afraid to ask. So let them see what employees are wearing, and what’s expected before they ever start on their first day.
How should clubs start standardizing staff training?
It’s perfect time to transition away from in- person training and standardize skills. The right platform is the first place to start.
With the right platform, you can leverage training content out of the box and automate onboarding which will get up and running in less time.
In the club industry, you don’t necessarily have staff that are sitting at a desk with your club’s email address. For this
reason, I suggest a platform to enable communication.
For Westmount, we now have a central hub, to share documents, training and even staff forms and I can manage the employee records electronically all from the same platform
On-demand training platform with courses to up-skill club staff.
Consistent service Improved profitability
Better member experience
CONFIDENCE THAT STAFF IS TRAINED TO YOUR STANDARDS.
CLUBCORE.CA