Targeted Training

About the Book

The biggest threat to your business is employees who don’t demonstrate the right behaviors! By the time your traditional employee training program gears up to address the problem, you will have lost customers and potentially be out of business! It’s no secret that hard times place enormous stresses on businesses and governments. However, a more sinister threat has been eating away at the private and public sectors for the more than 30 years – regardless of economic conditions. This threat metastasizes each time an employee fails to do the “right” thing, disregards a customer’s needs or fails to follow standard operating procedures. The result is poor quality, dissatisfied customers, a co-worker lawsuit and/or reduced sales. The worst part of this scenario is that those behaviors are enabled by YOU! You the executive leadership team, you the line supervisor, you the training professional and you the uncomplaining employee who struggles to stay focused during yet another three-day training session, while a pile of work sits waiting for you. In desperation, you will commit to more training, where a larger set of facts will be jammed into a smaller window of time. And at the end of the last training day, as you stagger out of the stale air of an over-crowded training room, perhaps it will dawn on you … it’s not just what employees know, it’s how they behave that will save or strangle your enterprise. We passionately believe the future of any company lies in the heads, hearts and hands of its workers. Effective training is more than just transferring information. There’s simply too much of it out there. Unless it cuts through the clutter and personally grabs us, we tend to tune out and shut down. We are aware of the critical need to move workers to want to use and apply the information that is at their fingertips, so that training is worth your investment. Last year, and for countless years before it, private businesses and governmental units have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee training programs. And for good reason … Our nation’s education system is not designed to prepare anyone for the specific behaviors needed to be successful in the workplace. Traditional educators do a slightly better job with “skills” training, but only in a generalized manner, often failing to connect those skills with on-the-job performance. When global economic conditions turn downward, it only furthers these challenges as many “trained” employees are asked to pitch in and perform unfamiliar duties. Likewise, other “displaced” workers find themselves forced to confront completely new workplace settings where day-to-day expectations do not correlate to prior experience.

About the Author

Dennis (DOC) O’Connor Dennis (DOC) O’Connor is the President of DOCOM Consulting, LLC. He has more than 23 years of experience in the training, marketing and communications industries. Dennis began his career as a journalist, serving as the Managing Sports Editor for the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit for 10 years. Prior to DOCOM, DOC served as a Vice President-Training Operations Director for a Detroit-based agency, focusing on the successful delivery of training projects for Detroit-area clients. DOC received his Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Wayne State University (Detroit), specializing in Management and Marketing. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree and Secondary Teaching Certification from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, majoring in Journalism and Mathematics. DOC also is a Certified Focus Group Moderator from the Burke Institute in Cincinnati. Penny A. Drain Penny A. Drain has 27 years of consulting, instructional design, and facilitation experience with various industries including manufacturing, utility, health services, managed care organizations, education, government, retail, and non-profit. Penny has worked extensively in the area of safety, quality, diversity and processes within manufacturing, utilities and managed-care organizations. She also has designed and developed problem solving/quality tools sessions for Tier I auto suppliers, utilities, governments and managed care. Ms. Drain earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the Ohio University. She has continued her education in various instructional areas i.e., Systematic Teamwork, Problem Solving, Problem Solving and Planning, Instructional Design and Development, Developing Procedures, Policies and Documentation, Project Management, Time Management and Facilitation Skills.