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| Corporate Cultures |
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| Training: Chicken or Egg
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It’s kind of a chicken-or-egg question: does a corporate
culture shape training, or does training shape the culture?
The role of training in the building of a corporate culture
is often a mystery to casino executives, who sometimes
see no connection at all between the two. “So many
companies treat it like a band-aid,” says Ann Brunkhorst.
“Like, ‘Oh, I see our service scores went
down. We’d better bring someone in and do a round
of training.’ It gets better for a very short period
of time and then, because nobody is really reinforcing
it, everybody slips back into the old pattern.”
She adds, “The biggest challenge is having people
who don’t think of training as being valuable. If
nobody buys into it, it’s not going to be any different.”
For nearly seven years, Ann Brunkhorst was Vice President
of Education and Associate Development for Grand Casinos.
She was instrumental in helping integrate training functions
with corporate culture development. She left the organization
recently to form her own consulting firm, Practical Leadership,
in Minneapolis.
According to Brunkhorst, the answer to the riddle of which
comes comes first – culture or training –
is, it depends. “If the culture includes support
for training – in other words, if part of the culture
is to place value on training – then I do think
the training will be more effective within that organization.
If the culture is such that the CEO and top executives
don’t place a value on it, training is going to
have a very hard time,” Brunkhorst says.
On the other hand, Brunkhorst believes it’s possible
for training to help form a culture. “Training can
actually be part of promoting the culture. If training
includes language and prescribed behaviors that reflect
the values of the predominant culture, it will build on
itself.”
She places great emphasis on these two basic elements
– having a vocabulary, a lexicon used in the culture
that constantly communicates the desired cultural meanings,
and having behavioral norms that define expectations.
“If the corporate culture is focused on providing
the best guest service, training should be built around
that concept to affect people’s language and behavior.
You need to describe it to everyone who comes in –
the housekeeper, the porter, the slot person, the dealer...everyone.
The other basic is fixing a model for what behavior provides
the best guest service. And constantly reinforce those
things with the staff.”
The top priority for training and corporate culture development,
however, is getting the middle management layers onboard.
“Whether you are starting a new business or want
to reinforce or modify an existing culture, I would start
with the managers. If you get them to buy in and understand
the behaviors you want to see, understand the level of
service you desire in the culture, you’ll be more
likely to get it all the way to the front line if the
managers are reinforcing it,” she says.
She considers it an absolute essential that middle mangers
be included in training. “Everyone’s watching
the boss, and they measure the company by what they see
managers doing – how they treat employees, how they
treat customers, how they treat company property. Even
though many companies treat manager training as sort of
an afterthought, I think it’s really a basic requirement
for culture building.”
In laying out the syllabus for manager training, Brunkhorst
recommends constant repetition of the common thread –
the corporate vision/mission. If guest service is the
primary focus, talk to managers involved with hiring about
how to look for people who are willing to provide good
service, willing to take the steps to ensure they will
get the job done. Another component might be how to come
up with topics for staff meetings, including guest service
on the agenda to get employee ideas on how to do it better.
Talk about performance evaluations and how to measure
employees on their service delivery, how to get them to
think about it, how to help them improve their service
delivery and recovery. Discuss with managers how to weave
guest service into disciplinary situations. Constantly
tell the managers, “This is the way we’d like
you to act with customers and employees, because it will
provide the best opportunity to give good guest service.”
Sometimes there are veteran managers who bring bias and
resistance to such training, their attitudes shaped by
their own experiences. Brunkhorst’s approach to
dealing with them is to be a good listener and observer
to identify those who aren’t buying in, then deal
with them forthrightly.
“When you see managers
doing things that don’t fit the culture, be very
direct. Ask them, ‘Why did you embarrass that employee
in front of her co-workers?’ Require an answer.
Find out what it is. Maybe they don’t realize they’re
coming off the way they do. Or in some cases, they just
don’t care. In which case, you have to let upper
management know about it.” Such managers can seriously
impede cultural development and even sabotage it.
The positive approach to getting managers to be champions
of the cultural cause is to show them what’s in
it for them. “If people can see a benefit, like
a department manager getting more productivity out of
employees and producing better customer service, they
will more likely do it. They’re not going to do
it just because the trainer says so. They’re going
to do it because they see a benefit to it,” Brunkhorst
says.
For CEOs who tend only to see training in the expense
column, an item to chop or cut back when times get tight,
Brunkhorst has an eye-opening argument. “Training
can actually be an investment. You spend advertising dollars
day after day to get people to visit your business. You
could take some of those dollars and invest them in training
your staff so that they will be the reason your customer
comes back the second and third time. Getting repeat visits
is a lot cheaper than constantly marketing to get new
customers. It goes right to the bottom line.”
The real answer to the chicken-or-egg riddle here seems
to be that corporate culture and training are symbiotically
linked. They are interdependent and develop in parallel.
Each shapes the other at the same time.
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