It's a snowy Saturday, and you are enjoying the job of supervising lift operations at your area. Things are squared away enough for you to grab your skis and head out to grab a couple of runs and check on your staff. Life is good. And then—

You are getting ready to board your favorite double chair when your radio crackles to life. Your senior lift manager is asking you to come over to the beginner lift, quickly. A patroller has misloaded a patrol sled, and the new lift op hit the wrong button in a panic to stop the lift.

As you walk over, you see a patrol sled jammed into the pit in front of the load ramp, a chair pushed up and back toward the haul rope, and a very upset patroller. With a little questioning, you discover that the new lift op hit the slow button instead of the E-stop, and the senior operator had to run over and stop the lift.

The new operator swears that no one told him when to use the E-stop. You know that your training program addresses that, and the senior op can’t believe that the new guy doesn’t know something so basic. Patrol extricates their sled, and shows you the bent handles, and cracked fiberglass.

How could this have happened? Didn’t your staff show these new operators anything?


TRAINING ISSUES
Every season, ski areas deal with new employees. These folks come from myriad backgrounds and have vastly different experience levels. The task of preseason training is to take these different individuals, with all of their personalities and learning styles, and create reliable, friendly and safe employees.

This is usually done in a short period of time, and is completed in a period when supervisors are often swamped with preseason tasks. So, you have a meeting, a little one-on-one training, some role play, and maybe even send them out their first day with an experienced mentor. You should be set, right? You would expect that since you have provided all the necessary information, your employees should be able to perform their jobs reliably. They might be a little shaky at first, but basically they should be ready.

If you are like most supervisors, you have a few lingering questions that probably give you heartburn. Okay, several questions:

• How do you know what information the newcomers really retained?

• How do the trainers and supervisors who are training the new workers remember all the items that they need to teach?

• Do they train the same with the first employee as they do with the 20th?

• If you do have an incident, how can you document that an employee was trained on a specific item or action?

• How do you deal with the employee that comes on board midseason, and wasn’t around for the formal preseason training?

These are questions that we at Huff Hills Ski Area in Mandan, N.D., have dealt with. They forced us to come up with a solution. We looked to another industry for help, one that trains and fields a large number of seasonal employees—wildland fire. Each summer, federal and state agencies have to quickly train and make cohesive firefighting teams out of literally thousands of new applicants across the U.S. These employees have to learn to do a dangerous job and work as a team with few mistakes. There is little room for error.


THE POSITION TASKBOOK
One of the tools that the Federal agencies developed is the Position Taskbook. A taskbook is used to train people for each position, or job qualification, that a firefighter can perform, from engine crew member to squad boss or even an incident commander. Each position has a taskbook that must be completed and signed off on. Some items can be completed in a classroom setting, some by demonstration or simulation, and some have to be performed in “real life,” on an actual incident. Until the taskbook is completed, the firefighter cannot perform that job without the assistance of a qualified person.

We figured, if it can work for an industry like wildland fire, why wouldn’t it work for our seasonal employees? So we developed a taskbook, which has improved our training and allowed us to be more consistent in training employees. This means that all the employees are more predictable, and we in management can be confident that all the new hires have the same set of skills and knowledge.

We initially started the program for lift operators. We analyzed the tasks that they have to perform and the knowledge items they need, and put these tasks and items into categories (see sample page). For example, all the steps and skills needed to load passengers are included in one category. The category would be signed off on when all the items are completed.

You can also group tasks or items by an area or location. For example, a drive terminal category could include all the components that a new lift op needs to be familiar with. It can also include procedures, such as pre-start procedures.

During the training process, the new employees use the taskbook like a passport. When they train on a category, are proficient at all skills and have a handle on all the knowledge, that category is signed off on. When they have signatures on all the categories, the taskbook is completed, and is signed off on one final time by a manager. There can be a “final exam” included in this step, where the manager observes the employee one-on-one. You can also require employees to be observed for a period of time to see them deal with real situations.


USES AND ADVANTAGES
You can customize the taskbook for any position. Many areas already have an established training program, and some positions may have required training mandated by a government agency. The taskbook could even include a category for the classroom session. This way, you can continue to follow your existing training programs and use the taskbook as a record-keeping tool.

You can also list “ticklers” under each category to remind trainers and employees of items that need to be covered. This way, you can ensure consistency across your trainers, and everyone starts work on the same page.

Your veteran employees will find it useful, too. Our lift manager remarked, after reviewing a draft of the lift operations taskbook, that it was a good review of everything. Even experienced staff say it makes it easier to remember all the important training items after being away from lift operations for the off season.

Another advantage is that it can eliminate “error creep” in your systems. When people learn a task, they initially are on target with their performance. If you think of it like shooting a gun, they are hitting the bullseye at the end of training. As time goes on, though, without a refresher, the pattern opens up a little, and a few of the rounds are hitting all over the target.

This happens for a variety of reasons—forgetfulness, laziness, routine— and often without anyone realizing it. This is why, for example, you have to refresh your CPR skills, and why patrols should practice rope evac procedures.

What happens when you don’t have a system to make your training consistent, and you promote operators to supervisor positions? Many times, we start teaching them the new skills they need for that job, and assume that they have the basics down pat. But what if their skills have slipped a bit? When they start training new employees, guess who will be learning those bad habits without even realizing it? The brand-new employee doesn’t know any other way than the way that he’s taught.

There were times that we could almost tell by watching a new operator if they were trained by a good supervisor or not. Many times when we saw a mistake, we would see the same error in the senior operator or supervisor who did the training. The taskbook’s reminders can help keep this from happening.

The taskbook is also a good record-keeping tool. If there is an incident with legal repercussions, we can easily show that an employee was trained on a particular item, and when they were trained. This has also made it easier to refute the excuse of “no one ever told me that” when an employee makes a mistake.

Huff Hills started using taskbooks for lift operators during the 2008-09 season. We have been pleased with the results, and we are now developing a taskbook for rental employees. Lift operations and the rental shop are the two areas that have the greatest turnover in the course of a season. In addition, the rental shop is prone to huge inefficiencies from even one poorly-trained employee on a busy day. We are hoping that by making it easier to have consistent training, this problem will be reduced.

The only problem we ran into with the taskbook was making sure that it was used consistently, as it was not something that we were accustomed to. We overcome this through a commitment to make sure they were filled out. Also, employees were not always the best at keeping track of their taskbooks until they were completed. For the future, we plan to offer a beanie, ball cap or some other cool uniform item that can be earned only by completing a taskbook.

Any means that can make it easier to deploy well-trained staff is helpful. Hopefully the taskbook can you help create better-trained and -prepared employees, and create less heartburn for your supervisors!


To obtain more information or a copy of the taskbook, e-mail andyb@huffhills.com.