Recently a good friend of mine decided upon a change in career.
It was a big decision.
Having previously carved out significant careers in hospitality and also in food technology and sports nutrition, my friend decided on the challenge of a new role in an area that she had previously not worked in.
She had applied for a job in “retail”.
And she was one of the successful applicants.
And so began the induction…
The thing that surprised me about the induction process that this organisation used for new employees was that acceptance to the role required some SIGNIFICANT pre-employment training.
Pre-employment training? That’s fairly normal, you would think?
Well, as I said, this role involved some SIGNIFICANT pre-employment training.
The pre-employment training involved a four-week educational process followed by a two-week on the job training “live” before applicants were then allocated a position within the retail organisation.
So I asked myself, what could be so difficult about training for retail?
After all, it’s not life or death.
Well that’s what I thought….
Really, how much harder could a retail induction be compared to an induction to work as a dental assistant or to work as a dental front office receptionist?
Well, let me tell you this:
The training manual that my friend received was a two-ring binder with three inches thickness of pages.
Within said binder were more than ten modules of education that my friend was required to learn and to master in order to complete her PRE-employment training.
As an example of the attention to detail of this organisation, here are just five of the many topics that my friend was required to learn and master in order to complete her pre-employment onboarding process:
- Greet customers in a polite and friendly manner within designated response times and make them a priority over other workplace duties.
- Show interest in customer’s needs and maintain a welcoming customer environment free of complacency.
- Selling to the customer by establishing customer needs, providing advice on any product or service, and facilitating the sale.
- Use questioning and active listening to facilitate effective two-way communication.
- Take opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell products and services that enhance customer request and maximise profitability of sale.
I found the attention to detail within this strict onboarding process to be quite extraordinary.
For a retail position, where I thought the staff attitude would be simply “you’re in our store because you have a NEED”, my feeling is that we have certainly come a long way, in terms of the impressions given by this organisation.
My observation is this:
In dentistry, sadly, the onboarding process is often as hurried and as brief as:
“You’ve answered the phone, there’s the phone, go answer it….”
A heck of a lot of the time.
Can we do better when hiring?
We need to live by the edict:
“Hire slow and fire fast.”
If we do not, other industries are going to pass us by….
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