The Facts on Video Training

 

By Gary Finch

 

Video training is not designed to substitute for the required annual renewal training for employees.   This is why each year we develop a Microsoft Power Point Presentation that the funeral home safety officers use to train employees.  We also can come to your location to provide this, but the majority of our network members do their own training.  It is easy and inexpensive.

 

Video training is designed for initial employee safety training. The difference between what is required for initial training and for annual renewal training is analogous to the difference between a small stock pond and the Atlantic Ocean.  There are over one hundred required items that must be covered in initial training.  All that is required for renewal training is a review of recent changes in the standard.  Usually there are none and a simple review of the basics is sufficient.  This takes 30 to 45 minutes.

 

Initial training takes several hours to cover all the required areas.  There are not many funeral directors that have the expertise to do this training.  Yet, with the video, it’s easy.  All they do is show the video; give the new employee a tour of the facility, offer hepatitis B shots, and get the training certificates signed. 

 

How does the competition prepare you to develop initial employee training?  What happens after they are gone, and you hire new employees?  Are you trained to train those new employees?  You could call your consultant back to do it, but that means more fees and another trip charge.  It goes on and on.  There is no stated goal to make you sufficient and independent.  It starts you on a road of dependency where the only way out is to ask them to keep coming back, over and over and over.   And the fees keep mounting each time they do.    

 

In my first year of business, I developed a safety manual that sold for a few hundred dollars.  It was a good manual, and the buyers were happy.   I was too.  However, follow up visits to those funeral homes revealed that their safety programs were not properly maintained.  I realized my customers needed a program with more hand-holding.  So I did a 180 and began to develop resources to make compliance easier.  It included the Alert newsletter, a filing system, safety-forms on MS Word, fresh renewal training each year, hiring and training regional representatives, and developing two types of video training.  One was to train a new employee.  The second was designed to train a new safety officer.  

 

Video training is your key to independence.  It allows you to be self-sufficient. That is our goal, and it should be your goal as well.  The videos are no Hollywood production, but unless your safety administrator can lecture employees on the epidemiology of HIV, Hepatitis B, and other bloodborne diseases, you benefit from this resource.  

 

Today, we have distributed over 800 video sets to our funeral home customers.   The only one who seems to be complaining about this is our competitor.  It is certain that not one customer has complained.  Compliments from them are common.  Thus, we not only defend our video training, but promise to continue developing new and improved resources for our members of our compliance network.