Put Yourself in a Trainee’s Shoes

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It is fun to watch a popular TV show on CBS, now in syndication, called “Undercover Boss – reruns and all.” Watching a CEO or executive of a major corporation slip into disguise and enter the world of their workers is interesting and entertaining. Sometimes they find the organization needs a little “tweaking,” and sometimes it needs major rethinking.

The entertainment value, I suppose, comes from watching these individuals being tossed into a job classification – alien to most of them – and, while cameras are rolling, receiving a crash coarse in performing various job tasks. Some tasks are performed close to the customer. Not only do leaders get a rare look at what it is like at the lower rungs of the organization, in some cases they get a look at the sub-par performance most of their customers experience and how tenuous the corporation’s existence is – sustained only by the initiative a few loyal, but mostly self-interested, employees. These employees try to make up for the corporation’s short-comings as if their job and future depend on it…which they do. If the company fails, they lose their job, plain and simple. Some put up with the company’s shortcomings in pursuit of the next opportunity.

It is interesting to see CEO’s marvel at how difficult it is to learn the job tasks they previously thought were inconsequential and not worthy of attention. Previously known only as a word on a report, the fact that how the tasks are performed by these neglected employees are the reason the corporation exists goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Some episodes look like popular television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, “I Love Lucy.”

A typical Undercover Boss episode might reveal:

• Unstructured, inconsistent and incomplete training;

• Uneven and uncertain motivation;

• Conflicting operating orders;

• Unexpectedly outdated or inoperable equipment;

• Unclear standard practices;

• Unexpected lack of leadership at the local level spawned by unexpected lack of leadership at the upper levels;

• Unvarnished displays of workers rising above these organizational inadequacies and their own personal challenges to ensure product gets out the door and services are performed with pride.

Focusing on one aspect, in each case the resident expert was selected to train the covert executive. These attempts at unstructured, task-based training give a vivid picture of the limitations, risks, and failures of foregoing a deliberate training strategy. CEOs, who previously were told that the corporate training programs proliferated to each facility were “state of the art” and “working quite well” are now exposed from the end-users perspective. In a typical episode, if you look past the entertainment factor, one can easily detect:

1. How hard it is to train a new worker while the assembly or production line is running at maximum speed or with customers streaming in;
2. How training, without structure, causes to new-hire to purely “mimic” the trainer’s actions, often without understanding what is meant to be accomplished, awareness of any safety hazards, what makes performance acceptable or excellent – all things necessary to becoming a “star performer;”
3. How co-workers of the resident expert appear to have learned different procedures and practices, to different levels of performance, and that the “average” performance – across all employees in the department not just the star performer selected for the camera – may be unacceptable and a threat to the corporation’s longevity;
4. How companies sometimes survive, or thrive, not because of management’s performance, but in spite of management’s neglect only through the good graces of employees who view loss of their job through company failure as not an option;
5. How a convergence of detrimental management policies (e.g. keeping wages/benefits low, ratcheting up the unrealistic demands for more output from of each worker, no standardize training, inadequate equipment and support– all leading to low employee morale) places a corporation capable of strong, consistent and sustained performance at risk of failure though the board of directors might hear how profits each quarter are rising…for now.

At the end of each episode, there is usually an “ah ha” moment, a few steps toward atonement with regard to the few employees that appeared on the show, a public humiliation for a couple of bad performers that embarrassed the brand, and a promise to make things better for all employees. Why did it take all of this to reach that point? Maybe because middle-managers who implemented policies that led to this state of decay did what they were told, or what they thought they were told. It wasn’t until the CEOs witnessed the end results themselves did the need for change, or a return to normal, seemed necessary. The author Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” What guides managers in their actions, or inaction, isn’t always clear.

A corporation shouldn’t need to go to this extreme to discover the company’s strength and weaknesses, but if it is the only way to make the point and save the company and its employees, well that is just fine. But it seems that more of a balance between “maximizing shareholder value” and “sustaining a viable and thriving organization” needs to be struck. It seems by the many examples on Undercover Boss alone it better be struck sooner than later. It should never take that long for the CEO and upper-management to find out what customers and first-level employees encounter on a daily basis.

I am not sure if the producers of Undercover Boss meant to produce case-study training videos for management, or diagnostics of existing operations, but they succeeded in both. Not only should the companies appearing in the show make a serious effort to act on what they found, every corporation would benefit from watching – if only a few episodes – and embarking on a period of introspection.

Since the majority of each show illustrates the need for structured on-the-job training, giving serious consideration to dismantling any barrier to learning and mastering the job classification would be a good start. Standardizing work processes to a high level and detecting areas of task performance that may lead to mal or unsafe-performance are vital for thriving organizations. So is providing a structure that facilitates learning job tasks quickly and completely, and that positively impacts overall performance and employee morale. The analysis used to create and implement a structured on-the-job training program also provides a wealth of information to validate pay levels, benefit levels and criteria for performance evaluation and improvement.

Proactive Technologies’ PROTECH© system of managed human resource development  provides this structure, without breaking the bank or burdening the operation. It is worth a look. Check out the website and contact a representative for more information. Or sign up for Undercover Boss and find out for yourselves.