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Do you ever feel like you are always repeating the same things over and over again to your employees?

This can often be the cause of much frustration and quite draining to employers and manager. But there is good news, YOU are on the right track.

Remember when you were a kid at school learning your times tables? How did you learn them…2×2=4, 2×3=6…and you would repeat them over and over again relentlessly until one day all of a sudden, they became second nature to you.

This style of learning is no different from the way many people in your business learn both simple and complex tasks. We have all heard the term practice makes perfect, well grab hold of it and repeat, repeat, repeat, relentlessly.

Now in this new age of employment the last thing your employees will want is you nagging them over and over again. So we need to convert this idea of relentless repeatability into a scalable systematized approach. The simplest and most effective way to do this is build checklists.

At the start of your next day hand outlined pieces of paper to each employee have them write their name at the top and the date, then add three columns, TASK, DESCRIPTION, TIME. Next ask them to write down every activity they perform today pre and post your service period. Then at the end of the day compile their information and turn them into checklists.

To gain maximum impact, chances are you will need to remind them a few times and help to coach them into writing tasks down. Remember to catch them doing it correctly and praise them for their efforts. This is especially important as this is not part of their normal daily activities.

When you are engaging your team to write the checklists and then to use them every day, it is important to have them own the checklists through their involvement, rather than just having them handed down by management. Their involvement in the development turns them into a form of agreement. Now they may not get them perfect the first or even second time, rather than pointing out all the items they missed. Print off the check list and use it the next day. Then at the end of the shift ask them, “What were the other tasks you completed today?” This will help to prompt them to add additional items.

I have found checklists to be invaluable assets to my businesses over the years. In the early days as a proprietor, I thought I was smart enough to know how to do everything and I would race around micro managing my team. Then I learnt that novices don’t use checklists it is only professionals use checklists.

Take an airline pilot for example, before takeoff they have a long preflight safety checklist that needs to be completed before they take off from the ground with their precious cargo of passengers. They do this because they know, that if the preflight safety checklist is 100% complete and every item is passes then that is the best prediction of arriving at their destination safely.

When I heard this example of an airline pilot explained to me, it sounded very similar to running a venue successfully to me. At the start of each day we have our precious cargo “our customers”, join us for a “journey” their dining experience. Critical to our success is that they arrive at the end of their experience incident free and able to depart as raving fans. To do this, it takes a lot of timely execution of hundreds of tasks from frontline and support crew, just like on an airline. When each member of the crew has a checklist that that successfully complete on time every time with relentless repeatability, you can predict that it is going to be a great service period.

How many thoughts can your brain process at one time?

If you’re really intelligent, your working memory – the part processing what’s in your consciousness – can handle up to seven thoughts at one time.

As soon as the eighth thought rears … pop … one of the earlier thoughts is lost.
Unfortunately not everyone is able to process this many thoughts; a recent study found most people can only handle three or four thoughts in their “working memory”.

The working memory is constantly fighting to filter out all the needless distractions around us. These distractions have a major impact on our ability to concentrate and learn.

As a trainer, you are constantly battling to maintain as much of the working memory real estate of your students as possible, for as long as possible.

Each generation of new employees coming through is growing up in a world of hyper-stimulation, with hundreds of ideas, thoughts and distractions whizzing past them at the lightening speed of our information super highways. DVDs, ipods, blogs, wikis, SMS, email, instant messenger; an abundance of stimulus is being cast at our new employees and some of us are still trying to figure out just exactly what they are.
It’s so much more for the human brain to adapt to filter out the noise in order to learn.

The good news is that the new generations are highly skilled at consuming and filtering information. If we are smart enough to adapt our styles to draw out these talents, we can train quickly and on the run.

The key here is to understand that, more and more, learning occurs in bite-sized consumable chunks. Remembering that people are bombarded with so many stimuli, it is important to find the balance between delivering the right amount of information and not overwhelming our employees when educating them.

Understanding that people can only hold onto between four to seven thoughts or concepts in their mind at one time, top trainers are conservative with how many of these thoughts they try to control. Effective trainers allow students to have at least one or two to thoughts to themselves.

This concept becomes even more necessary if you are to engage a student on a questioning level directly after you have taught them how to perform a task or learn new information.

For me, this approach has provided outstanding results time and time again. When training or attracting the attention of students, I will often start with the phrase:

“There are three key points you will need to remember when…”

This simple phrase prep’s a student’s expectations of what is to come. It also puts their minds at ease, ensuring them they are not about to enter into some sort of epic draconian saga.

Having only three key points also increases the chance of information retention.
To qualify if the individual is learning, ask the question:

“Tell me the three key points you have just learnt.”

You have a higher chance of a positive outcome.

The three key points training method is particularly useful when bringing on first time employees and you don’t have the luxury of timeout for a full induction. Simply show and write down for them the three key things they need to focus on during their first shift and watch them perform. It is also a great way to test their comprehension skills.

When training teams of people, focus on just three key points for a day or week, then print them in large font on A4 paper and distribute them around your venue. Have your supervisor quiz each team member at the start, middle and end of their shift on what the three points are. Then have your supervisor ask each of them at least once to demonstrate them.

This process also empowers the supervisor to learn through teaching.
Now imagine you had three points to focus on each week. Within a year your team will have been given the chance to become experts in approximately 150 different tasks.

Thanks for Reading

My Goal with this blog is to help Employers and Casual Workers to better understand each other and achieve great results togehter.

If you are an Employer or person looking for casual work, please check out our revolutionary approach to matching you together to fill shifts of temporary work in your area http://www.ployme.com.au/