Recruit, Inspire & Retain Newsletter -- Training Systems, Inc.

When You Make Work Fun, You’ll Do It Better

When you drive into one of two St. Louis-area Gas House carwashes, you'll likely wonder what in heaven’s name does "Penguin Approved" mean?

Well, if you know anything about owner Stu Mandel, you can guess that whatever the meaning, there has to be a funny story behind it.

"I'm not normal. I know I'm not well," Mandel jokes. "When you make work fun, you'll do it better because you'll be enjoying it. We do a lot of stuff to make that happen."

[Fun Meter] All Gas House team members wear smiles, bright uniforms and company-issued Fun Meter buttons. With their Fun Meters set on Max, employees are sure to greet you with a friendly hello. And if you're under the age of 12, the rewards are smiles plus some penguin stickers.

On holidays like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Mickey Mouse's birthday, patrons get a special treat—a visit from none other than Gas House's penguin mascot. And if your car is the selected color of the day—such as red on Valentine's Day—you'll get a free carwash.

Gas House has two locations; an exterior express in the central west end of St. Louis and a full serve in nearby Rock Hill, Mo. The company employs about 60 people between the two sites. Both locations have gas pumps and the express location has a 4,000-square-foot convenience store.

Gasoline at the Rock Hill site is priced higher than the surrounding gas stations, but customers don't seem to mind paying a little more for gas because the main reason they're there is for a fun time and a great carwash.

Fun is as essential to the Gas House experience as water and soap. And with Mandel at the helm,
it couldn't be any other way. "People say to me, 'Stu, you like your job, don't you?' I say no,
I love my job."

Mandel says Gas House's upbeat approach to business was spurred on by an experience he had while attending one of his first International Carwash Association shows in the 1970s. While sitting with some fellow operators, Mandel became involved in an intense discussion about the best kind of ball bearing to use.

"I said to myself, is this my life? I didn't find that part of the business enthralling," Mandel says.

It was then that he decided to put his talent for making people laugh to use, by developing a marketing plan that would draw people into Gas House locations for clean cars, gasoline and a much-needed bright spot in their busy days.

After several years of doing all kinds of fun things for customers, Gas House decided to do some good for the community. All of the holiday promotions are now tied to non-profit groups like the St. Louis Children's Hospital, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

"When customers come through, they tell our crew members that they appreciate what we do for these various charities," Mandel says. "We want our team members to be proud of where they work. They get reinforcement from customers that we're part of the community and we're doing good stuff."

Crew members are also rewarded for doing a good job or going the extra mile for a customer. Managers will hand a crew member a $2 bill and small "penguin" card that says, "keep up the good work." Employees also enjoy an occasional free lunch on the company.

Mandel says Gas House couldn't be the success it is without the dedication of its team members.

"We go above and beyond for our crew members," Mandel says. "I mean, if I hated these people, I'd still do the same stuff because when they come in contact with customers, I want them to be positive and friendly." Mandel says good customer service is essential these days, as customers have less and less contact with people. And, he says, when they do have contact, it's not always positive. "As we become more and more technology directed, it becomes even more important that the contact customers have with team members is friendly and positive."

"I can look and see that the cars are clean and dry and shiny, but when they tell us how friendly our people are, that's great. That's the hardest challenge—finding people who care."

Adapted from Modern CarCare, April, 2003

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**TOOL BOX**


●	*301 Ways to Have Fun @ Work*, by Dave Hemsath & Leslie Yerkes

●	Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love to Work, by Leslie Yerkes

Both available by emailing books@trainingsys.com

Tools: Recruit Inspire Train Retain

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TRAIN SO THEY’LL LEARN

Scenario-Based Questions Improve Learning Results

After years of hearing about the benefits of scenario-based questions, you have become a huge fan. Your devotion to these questions, although contagious and endearing at times, occasionally crosses the border into the dark reaches of madness.

Fortunately for you, one of your clients pulls you back to reality with a question about the benefits of scenario-based questions.

Specifically, she asks, "If your team helps me improve my instructional design by providing scenario-based questions, what percent improvement should I see in my learning results?"

How do you answer?

Improvement will be in the 10-20% range,
Improvement will be in the 30-70% range,
Improvement will be in the 50-100% range,
OR
Improvement will be in the 100-200% range

Scenario-based questions are powerful because they make it more likely that learners will spontaneously remember what they've been taught. In the question above, your client asked you about the benefits of scenario-based questions. Specifically, she wondered about the following characteristics of the instructional design:
(1) simulating the performance context of the learners,
(2) creating successful retrieval practice,
(3) providing feedback on the answers,
(4) repeating learning points over multiple questions, &
(5) spreading those questions over time.

Each of these design elements creates separate effects. This is a key point to keep in mind. The truth about instructional design can only be found by looking at the separate effects of individual learning methods.

Research from the preeminent refereed journals shows that
(1) simulating the performance context of learners can improve learning by 10 to 55%,
(2) creating successful retrieval practice results in 30 to 100% improvements,
(3) providing feedback increases learning by 15 to 50%,
(4) repeating learning points improves results by 30 to 110%, &
(5) spreading such repetitions over time can further improve learning by 5 to 40%.

Adding up these numbers shows a range of improvements from 90% to 355%. To be conservative about this, we might want to divide these results in half. Still, the improvements are large, ranging from 45 to 175%. To put this in perspective, if you get 100% improvement, you've doubled your learning!!

The answer to the question your client asked is (3) "Improvement will be in the 50-100% range." The answer is correct and conservative at the same time.

That’s a big spread — learning results will vary widely because different materials, learners, and situations create different effects. Even with this lack of scientific certainty, it’s obvious that well-designed scenario-based questions are an important tool for every instructional professional's toolkit.

This question was borrowed from the Work-Learning Research white paper on simulation-like questions.

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**TOOL BOX**


●	The Internet & Problem Based Learning, by William Stepien & Peter Senn

●	Problem-Based Learning in Higher Education, by Maggi Savin-Baden

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RETAIN THE BEST

Dumbing Down Your Employees — A Good Retention Technique?

As Director of Communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company’s training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the “pedagogical approach” used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR Director’s office, and told that the Executive Vice President wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn’t stand for “perverts” (pedophilia?) working in her company.

Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired — and the word “pedagogical” circled in red. The HR Director was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos.

A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.

**TOOL BOX**


●	How to Work For An Idiot: Survive & Thrive– Without Killing Your Boss, by John Hoover

●	Breaking the Barrier to Upward Communication: Strategies and Skills for Employees, Managers, and HR Specialists, by Thad Green, Jay Knippen

Tools: Recruit Inspire Train Retain

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Recruit, Inspire & Retain

Learning Improves Recruitment & Retention

“Come to Work Dressed As Your Salary” & Other Workplace Rules

When You Make Work Fun, You’ll Do It Better

Scenario-Based Questions Improve Learning Results

Dumbing Down Your Employees — A Good Retention Technique?