After more than a year in the making, ZIPS Cleaners recently rolled out its Certified Trainer program, designed to certify team members as trainers, and imbue them with effective skills in communication, implementation of training tools, and organization.
The Train the Trainer program was developed for ZIPS by the company’s Training and Development People Manager Jennifer Davis, and Field Training Manager Jennifer Hall.
Its intent is to create a training culture and mindset and ultimately achieve better outcomes from training sessions from location to location, including consistency in operational procedures, better retention of lessons and instructions and better performance by and retention of employees.
The program emphasizes separate four-step processes for training the trainers (Prepare, Present, Attempt and Achieve) and having the trainers train other team members (Tell, Show, Do and Review).
An inaugural class of 20 corporate and franchise managers and employees successfully navigated the program, held at the 70-unit garment care chain’s Savage, MD, headquarters (pictured on right). All Trainers received a certificate of completing the class.
“This program is off to a great start,” said Davis. “It was designed to build a culture around positive and effective training and improve employee retention and knowledge inside the four walls of ZIPS locations. Based on our turnout and the comments we received when the session concluded, I think we hit a home run.”
Next up for the program is to encourage additional ZIPS’ corporate and franchise stores to enroll more participants. Hall will visit each trainer to present each graduate personally with a Certified Trainer logoed uniform shirt, check on their location’s training area and observe them in action, implementing what they learned.
“I’m truly excited to see this Certified Trainer program come to life,” said Hall, “and I’ll be equally excited to watch it evolve. This is something I dreamed of doing back when I started with ZIPS in 2008. We now have the resources, tools and executive support -- exactly what we need -- to take ZIPS training to the next level!”
Bob Barry, president/CEO of ZIPS, added his thoughts: “With our new Certified Trainer program, we now have a formal, thorough way to replicate our brand standards in every employee who joins our team, ensuring their success while promoting optimal operations.”