We’ve all heard the horror stories coming out of the People’s Republic of California regarding idiotic environmental laws, social justice insanity, support for illegal immigration, drug use, homelessness, and idiotic transportation schemes that waste billions. However, part of the socialist story in Kalifornia that has not been told is government prevention of companies from adequately training their workers.
The phenomenon is puzzling as the problem is emanating from within the turf of Silicon Valley, where technology has made possible amazingly effective training programs which are much more palatable for large and small businesses alike while being much more cost conscious when it comes to bottom lines.
Gaming has long been a fabulous tool for training workers from the military to frontline customer service personnel. However, the videos and the transcripts and the custom development and the copy of legacy, video-based training systems—it all takes many months and ample funding to create, organize, and build. The magic happens when you combine gaming technology with the mobile platform—the result is a fun, effective, inexpensive training system that can be used at all times during the day, resulting in a well-trained, motivated, happy employee. Any business person understands this is the type of employee that brings repeat business and joyous customers.
But, here lies the rub in California. It seems state regulators do not like employees conducting workforce training outside of the work day, unless they are paid overtime. So if your barista wants to practice her latte-making skills while waiting for an Uber to take her to the library one Saturday morning, you have to pay her. Obviously this would not be cost-effective for most private enterprises.
“The workforce is different today. Never before have we seen five different generations at work at the same time. And, as a major company in the franchise space, we know companies like yours struggle with onboarding faster, upskilling employees better and firing up your people,” mobile work platform 1Huddle CEO Sam Caucci declared to a recent group of American franchise community CEOs.
“But that motivation thing is getting harder and harder. A recent study found that employees spend nearly 1/3 of working time—not doing work. And this isn’t just a problem with Millennials. You have this problem with all your employees.
“If we don’t get government out of the way, and improve the way we train employees, especially those who are on the front line with customers, our labor force will be less prepared, it will not look like you think it should, sales targets will be missed, and turnover will be higher which can crush a business,” Caucci added.
“Gaming can make it more fun, more effective; we can use technology to not replace people, but to train people better,” reported CD Media.
Yes, the most important function a government entity can perform when it comes to private markets is to simply get out of the way. This is a lesson that will eventually be learned in California, once the state goes through enough socialist pain. Hopefully it won’t get as bad as in Venezuela, but knowing the Marxist crowd in Sacramento, I wouldn’t bet on it.
