The Importance of Training Employees

It is vital for a leader to train his employees to a degree where they can handle everyday business the way they are expected to and ideally utilize all the resources to the fullest to produce product or provide service. In this way the enterprise can be efficient in its operating process.

Getting back to the giant watermelon story we heard in class, when problem occurs (the giant watermelon in the field) if the leader (the traveler) simply comes in and solve the problem for the people who are actually supposed to be dealing with it (the villagers) then the employees remain unskilled and not able to solve similar problems. In that case, the leader is needed every time similar problem occurs and very often this is an inefficient way of problem solving, just like when the villagers saw another giant watermelon in the field the next year, they panicked and went out to seek help from the traveler again.

However, if the leader deals with the situation like the second traveler did, which is getting the villagers to understand that there is nothing to be afraid of and teaching them how to deal with the problem themselves. By doing so, when the giant watermelon occurred again the next year the villagers were able to deal with the problem themselves right away. In business occasions, this illustrates enabling employees to solve recurrent problems themselves, so that the enterprise can be efficient and lean.

I remember one time back in China, my friends and I went to a McDonald’s for lunch. And one of my friends has diabetes so we ordered three classic cokes and one diet coke for drink. When the people at the counter gave us our orders, the drinks were placed side by side with no mark on them to separate the diet coke from the others whatsoever. We could not figure out which one was the diet coke so we had to reorder one for my friend’s sake. This awkward and unpleasant experience could be easily avoided if the McDonald’s person had pushed down the diet button on the lid for us. In essence, if the manager at that McDonald’s had trained the counter people to acquire the habit of pushing down the button to segregate different drinks especially diets from the non-diets, things would have been different.

In all, in order to keep the enterprise efficient and lean, employee training is a key thing to look at.