Open Forum

Why would we invest the resources it takes to adequately train our staff?  They can just learn as they go, right?  For most of my career, the implied procedure has been "Sit by Suzy and watch what she does. Then you do that."   

This training method, while it can be somewhat effective, has several drawbacks.  The most common being is that Suzy doesn't have time to teach someone to do the job while she's doing the job.  So, you end up with a trainee getting less than they need and Suzy being behind in her work and frustrated that the time spent training has caused a backlog on her desk. Not to mention the other parties that really don't care why their deal is delayed. 

Sometimes we assume new hires understand more than they do about the business.  I trained a pre-closer who literally was a bartender the day before she came to our office.  She had zero understanding of what the process was and actually thought that if you bought someone's house, you would get their mortgage.  She didn't know the buyer had to be approved for their own loan.  Up to this point, she'd had no reason to need to know, but this is a stark example of the extra time it might take to train someone new to the industry. 

We also sometimes forget that mistakes happen. I had worked for over 20 years on the lending side of our business.  When I became closer, I had read hundreds of settlement statements but had never prepared one.  While disbursing one of my first closings, I realized that I'd failed to add per diem interest to our expired payoff, so the amount collected was about $300 short.  I went to my attorney, checkbook in hand, and offered to literally pay for my error.  He would not allow me to pay and said it was a cost of doing business.  But he told me I'd never make that mistake again.  He was right, and now I use this example as a cautionary tale to students. 

In either case, dedicated training would reduce the occurrence of oversights and mistakes.  It's been said for eons that you must spend money to make money.  A bit of up-front investment in staff training would not only increase productivity but also save the firm significant dollars in the long run.  And as much fun as this whole industry is, we don't do it for free, do we? 

So, let's save Suzy some time and aggravation and produce highly trained staff to boot!

LIFE LESSON 
Invest in training up front to save on costly mistakes down the road.  

Click here for a link to our training schedule.