Harder Than It Sounds

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

Bryan’s piece this month is so filled with hopeful things. How many people win here? Let us count the ways: The Mexican retailers win because they will operate better and sell more if their employees are well trained; the employees win because they will be more valuable to their organizations and in whatever they may do next in their lives; the consumers of Mexico win because they will receive fresher products in better condition, more efficiently distributed. PMA’s grower/ shipper members win because they will have better customers to sell to. And PMA itself wins because by doing so much good, it keeps itself relevant and endears itself to its members.

The good that can come of this is so phenomenal that we best be certain to navigate the craggy shoals between where we presently are and the bucolic sand on which we hope to celebrate.

I find that research in this area is particularly difficult to use as a guide to action, for three basic reasons — plus, I find there is often a big problem even after the project is implemented.

First, the true authority is often not actually surveyed. I have had the opportunity to do more than a few projects for retailers over the years, and there have been various fees involved. The bills were always paid promptly, but rarely with a check from the retailer proper. Instead, I got a check from some shipper or wholesaler who wasn’t involved in the project at all.

When I inquired about this, I always heard the same thing: The retailer’s produce director desperately believed in training and wanted to bring in experts to teach, but any time the produce director would put such items in the budget, training would be struck out by people higher up. However, if certain suppliers offered a rebate of X percent of purchases but restricted the use of that money to training and education to enhance the department, the produce directors were permitted to take advantage of those programs.

Of course, although I was involved in a few big programs in which suppliers had formal programs, in many cases it was perfectly obvious that these vendors had the programs as a result of being told by the retailers that they should create them. And, in most cases, the suppliers simply responded on an ad hoc basis to their customer’s request for some help funding certain events.

Second, even when the actual training was fully approved in the budget, the training sometimes didn’t happen or was abbreviated. Why? Buying the training tools — bringing in speakers, buying computer-based training programs or access to online training tools —is, by far, the cheapest cost in training.

The big money is actually spent because you need to overstaff to allow time off for training. Imagine the program elected is going to require two hours a week from an associate. Further, imagine that the average associate works 20 hours a week and that you currently get the work done with 100 associates. You now need to add 20 additional associates — assuming they won’t participate in the training — to simply keep your departments staffed as before.

Where will you get them? Who will train them? How quickly can this happen? Can the hours be allocated so that you can live with only this amount of additional labor? It is harder than it sounds — if you only have five associates in a particular store and people insist on 20 hours or they won’t take the job, you now have to start splitting employees between stores.

Then, if all these obstacles can be overcome, who will pay for these added employees? If you don’t add them, what will be your cost in lost sales due to out-of-stocks, unhappy customers, etc.? The cost of training is so great and so hidden out of the training program’s line item that you can easily see why these programs so often don’t happen or are abbreviated.

Third, if the training is good, the employees become more valuable — but not simply to the current employer. They gain a credential and that credential has value in the free market. So, the very first thing you need to do once you invest heavily in employee training raises the employees’ wages so they won’t quit and go work for a competitor!

And then, if you do store-level training, you still suffer losses because of normal turnover as low-level employees leave for many reasons unrelated to working for competitors. All this makes the return-on-investment quotient on training problematic. If the employees don’t stick around long enough, it is hard to gain a return on that investment. And if those who do stick around get paid a big part of the value added by the training, it is hard to gain a return on the investment.

Finally, there is an overarching pratfall that is rather common. The program begins with great enthusiasm, investment is allocated, staffing is scheduled, the goal of 100 percent training is achieved. A ceremony, a party, a mention in the company newsletter and, then, a horrible thing happens: the company gives another person a job, and he does not have the training because everyone is busy and his training is “postponed.”

Alas, for training to make the contribution it can to the success of an organization, not only must the investment be large but it must also be continuous. Otherwise, the benefits of training dissipate quickly as an organization starts filling up with new people who are unfamiliar with the program.