The iPod as the new training manager.
How internet ordering can bring fast-casuals
up to speed.
The Apple iPod could be
safely dubbed the Walkman of the 21st century. The digital music players
and hard drives are a huge hit with an entire generation of young people
and have ushered in an age of digital music. In October 2005, Apple released
a new iPod capable of playing color video. This new feature gave TJ Schier,
president and founder of Incentivize Solutions, a novel idea: Use the video
iPod to train quick-service employees. His podTraining™ idea
could transform the way quick-serve employees learn how to do their jobs.
Now, four months later, Incentivize is teaming
up with Pal’s Sudden Service, a burger chain with 20 locations in eastern
Tennessee and southwest Virginia, to implement a custom video iPod training
system. Incentivize, which specializes in training operations, will load
updateable video iPods with 80 minutes of training videos and other
materials. Pal’s is the first company to order a customized set of
iPods for podTraining, but Schier says his company will also offer generic
pod training for other quick-serve restaurants.
Pal’s President and Chief Executive Officer Thom
Crosby says he was immediately attracted to Incentivize’s idea.
“We immediately saw podTraining as a winning idea,” he says.
“There is no doubt that we are always evaluating our training
methodology and chasing after training effectiveness. When we saw
podTraining, we saw it as the power tool it was.”
PodTraining offers a bevy of advantages to traditional
e-learning procedures practiced at service-industry jobs. E-learning,
Schier says, employs a stationary computer station that new employees use
to watch a series of training videos. His podTraining solution, which he
calls i-learning, allows new employees to immerse themselves in the work
environment while they view videos on the hand-held device.
“Pod learning is better than watching video
because pod learning is way more interactive,” he says. “You
can train a trainee at a job station with a video clip. You can watch how
to make Burger A on video, and then make it,” Schier says.
Crosby saw the on-site training capabilities
of pod training as soon as he heard about the idea. “Close to 100 percent of
our training needs to be on the job because it is much more effective at
behavioral change,” he says. “The iPod will allow us to be
going through professional training on the job site.”
“The
iPod will allow us to be going through professional training on the job site.”
Crosby highlighted the importance of stimulating
a trainee’s senses and various learning styles while they learn how
to do their new jobs. Different people learn in different ways, he says.
By training in the workplace, visual and audio stimulation combine with the
temperature ambient noises in the kitchen.
Besides the capability the iPod gives managers
to train employees in workspace, as opposed to a backroom, Schier says podTraining
breaks training videos into 30–90 second clips. These short bursts
of instruction are more engaging for new employees, who are typically
teenagers or young adults, than a 15-minute video on a computer, Schier
says.
Moreover, the small pod clips can focus on specific
details that are lost in longer, traditional training videos. “This
tool gives you the ability to put more details into the video. When
you’re watching a 15-minute video, you bore kids to death. We can
make these videos very specific,” he says. Schier says managers can
even carry the iPods around for use as correctional tools when an employee
needs to reminded how to perform a certain procedure.
Besides the obvious benefit of a training tool
that can go anywhere, the iPod software makes this training system highly
updateable and scaleable. Managers can add recipes, new training procedures,
charts, photos, and audio files to the iPods. “The benefit, to me, is if you
change procedure or put in a new item, you can get training out there
immediately, as opposed to getting a new DVD for every store. People we
talk to say they will get rid of a bunch of paper,” Schier says.
Podcasting, an iPod technology that allows iPod users
to download internet content onto the iPod, will help upper-level
management easily send new training materials to individual stores.
Corporate offices can produce training videos for new products and get
those videos to multiple stores in a fraction of the time and cost of
sending a hard copy of a video to every restaurant that needs one, Schier
says.
This flexibility fit snugly into Pal’s existing
restaurant setup. Crosby says the fact that the digital material on the
iPod is updateable is a key advantage. His Pal’s restaurants utilize
a wireless network to run the operation, and the new video iPods will interface
with that network.
Schier estimates that a typical quick-serve restaurant
will need one to three video iPods per store to train employees effectively.
The iPods will cost $600. Crosby decided to order two custom iPods for each
Pal’s restaurant. He wants those iPods to help train
employees in 17 key areas, including order taking and French-fry cooking,
he says.
Aside from cutting costs, Crosby expects the
new Pal’s podTraining, the content for which was finalized February 17,
to improve significantly one of the signature aspects of the operation:
training superiority. He says a professionally certified and highly trained
staff makes Pal’s more competitive.
Pal’s certification policy maintains that
all employees need to be certified to use the equipment in the kitchen. While
this process usually takes four to five weeks for a new employee, Crosby
estimates that the podTraining will save an entire week after his stores
start using the system.
Schier, on the other hand, plans to take his i-learning
concept to a host of different industries. Any business with line-level
employees, like a hotel or retail store, could use podTraining to their
advantage he says.
Vendors who receive many service calls, such as
Coca-Cola, could load a video iPod with content for their clients, so
clients could troubleshoot their own vending machine problems.
Moreover, the podTraining idea should resonate
with the overwhelmingly younger crowd who staff quick-serve restaurants. “I
hope—knock on wood—that this goes far beyond the restaurant
industry,” Schier says. “Every kid I talk to knows how to use
an iPod, and you can do it in Spanish to the bridge cultural gap. We have
to spend more time showing managers how to use these things, kids find out
how to work it immediately.”
This column originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of
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