Dear Reader,

You thought we disappeared. Quite the opposite--gosh, there's lot of work.

I hope the bleak economy hasn’t trickled too far into your company…  if it has,
perhaps some of the thoughts below can help.

In this issue: "New Employee Training" as part of Efficiency Training & Consulting.

Regards,
Oliver (Ollie) Koepke, aerial-survey-base

New Employee Training

At the heart of an aerial business are your flight operations. Most projects start with an aircraft & camera, and well trained data acquisition engineers.

And, our aerial photography profession is rapidly evolving from film-based cameras to digital sensors.

Recent developments with aerial camera technology, computers, and software solutions have led to development of new methods of producing aerial imagery.

New Employee Training for Operators (NETO) effectively integrates the new employee into your organization and assists with retention, motivation, job satisfaction, and quickly enabling each individual to become contributing members of the Flight Department.

Many companies provide some sort of introductory training for most of their new operators. It may take the form of an older Navigator assigned to show the new employee "the ropes." Or it may be left to the supervisor to show them where the coffee pot is and how to apply for time off. Many organizations, especially in government, have created new employee training that is designed, exclusively or primarily, to provide mandated safety familiarization. We'll do this for the aerial survey industry.

Why New Employee Training for Operators?

To Be Productive: training new employees will make them more productive.

To Reduce Startup Costs: Proper training can help the employee get "up to speed" much more quickly, thereby reducing the costs associated with learning the job, especially "lost" days because of weather and flying hours.

To Save Time for the Supervisor: Simply put, the better the initial training, the less likely supervisors and co-workers will have to spend time teaching the employee.

To Develop Realistic Job Expectations, Positive Attitudes and Job Satisfaction: It is important that operators learn as soon as possible what is expected of them, and what to expect from others, in addition to learning about the values and attitudes of the expensive equipment. While people can learn from experience, they will make many mistakes that are unnecessary and potentially damaging. The main reasons training programs fail: The program was not planned; the employee was unaware of the job requirements; the employee does not feel welcome.

The most frequent complaints about New Employee Training are that it is overwhelming, boring, or that the new employee is left to sink or swim. The result is often a confused new employee who is not productive and is more likely to leave the organization within a year.

Reasons To Not Do New Employee Training

Even at the less than $1500 per year for training an employee we reported by The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD, 2006). it is still a cost. For some companies, especially those with traditionally high turnover, it can be a major expense. If your profit per employee is less than $1500, it would be difficult to convince the stakeholders that training is justified.

Why Do New Employee Training Not surprisingly, all the reasons not to train new employees (except cost itself) are actually reasons to do that training.

If you have high turnover, training new employees will make them more productive.

They will feel better about themselves and the job. They will stick around longer.

If your profit per employee is less than $1500 per year, you have major problems. You need to start training all your employees, not just your new employees, right away. And if you still believe that schools provide adequate training to make students labor-ready you are living in a dream world. Yes, some job seekers make the effort to learn on their own the skills needed for a new job, but most get that training on the job.

You want your new employee to experience his new job as a major turn on. Why is it that organizations so often act in ways that create the opposite result?

These are the top 10 ways to guarantee your new employee will start off on the wrong foot - possibly forever.

Make sure a work area has not been created or assigned. (Let him sit in the hangar)

Schedule the new employee to start work while the supervisor is on vacation.

Leave the new employee standing in the company reception area for a half hour while reception staff try to figure out what to do with him.

Leave the new employee at the camera, to manage on him own, while coworkers pair up and head out to lunch.

Provide an hour in a noisy lobby for the new employee to read and sign-off on a 100 page Employee Handbook.

Show the new employee his office and don’t introduce him to coworkers or assign him a mentor.

Assign the new employee to a staff person who has a major, career-impacting deadline, in three days.

Assign the new employee to your most unhappy, negative, company-bashing staff member.

Assign the employee “busy work” that has nothing to do with the core job description, because you are having a busy week.

Start the new employee with a one or two day new employee orientation during which Human Resources personnel make presentation after presentation after presentation after presentation ...

Learn more about aerial-survey-base »

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GSD Calculator Version 4
 

New version of the GSD Calculator is available for download. We have included now a RFP section, add some more cameras and it checks now for updates. Download the free GSD Calculator.

Read more »

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about aerial-survey-base:
Since 1983, aerial-survey-base's experts have provided a wide range of aerial photography, photogrammetry, and digital mapping services to customers across the world. Since 2002, our consulting has helped flight departments to operate more productively and improve the quality of their work product. We provide aerial survey & efficiency training, primarily for use in the data acquisition process. Having worked with private, governmental and military organizations around the globe, we've built a deep expertise in people's performance with technology. We are confident that we can improve any workforce's productivity while making them look more professional in the process.

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