“How would you determine if an employee is having hard time learning or just does not want to learn the proper way to clean?”

Tonya from Monkey Shines Cleaning submitted this question in response to my last blog on training.

Ever hear of students failing a class in school or college because of poor instruction by a teacher or professor? The same holds true with employees in any business who receive poor training from their instructor/supervisor. This situation is easy to identify if you have team leaders doing the field training for new employees. If the Training Review Reports on employees trained by one team leader are consistently lower scoring than employees being trained and supervised by other team leaders, you need to have a Performance Review and talk with the supervisor/trainer of the more poorly reviewed employees. In response to your question, I am going to assume this is not the case with this particular employee.

I am not sure that even Dr. Phil could answer your question in a psychoanalysis of the trainee. However, if the employee receives favorable Training Review Reports (which means she must have been following instructions during training) and then subsequent Performance Reviews indicate your worker is “doing her own thing” and no longer performing as expected, this would definitely indicate an attitude problem more than a learning challenge.

The bottom line is, Tonya, regardless of whether it’s an attitude problem or an inability to learn from a qualified instructor, my recommendation is “THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT.”