Kitchen & Bath Design News recently posed the question to dealers and designers in the kitchen and bath industry: What kind of training do you provide to new employees, and what training methods do you find are most effective? Following are some of their responses:

“One of the ways I provide training is through an internship at my corporation for local students. It helps them get a feel for what is required from a designer in the real world. I think it is important for them to understand that it is not necessarily a glamorous profession – there are a lot of behind-the-scenes responsibilities, including paperwork and issues to be addressed with clients and subcontractors.

Typically the internship lasts for one semester. I have been offering these internships since 1986. The things I train the intern in are based on the flow of the jobs at that time, and I introduce them to suppliers, which will help their communication skills. It’s important as a designer to ask pertinent, professional questions, so this gives them the opportunity to understand what a designer does each day and how to ask questions.

Klaudia Spivey, president
Design Times
Denver, CO

“We’ve always spent a tremendous amount of time teaching layout and design. However, we will also send new employees to the NKBA school. We highly recommend doing that. In fact, it worked so well that those employees eventually went off on their own!

Typically, we also avail ourselves of the K/BIS seminars. We’ve had two employees that we’ve helped to get their CKD [certification]. We are heading out to a distributor in Colorado next week and attending a one-day conference on detailing in marketing and green design. We’ve sent our employees over the years to a number of daily seminars for that type of training.

We will always immerse our employees in every training opportunity, whenever it applies.

Rick Anderson, designer/sales
The Kitchen Place
Wichita, KS

“The most effective training method we use here is having a new employee shadow our more experienced designers, which amounts to a very practical, hands-on internship. A lot of the cabinet companies and appliance reps offer in-house training as well, and we will also have the employee visit the manufacturer’s facility. We find it is also beneficial to utilize the NKBA and do the continuing education classes, as well as attend local chapter meetings.

We have set up a flat-screen TV in our conference room that is hooked up to our computer system, so multiple employees can attend Webinars that we host.

Lastly, we conduct weekly staff meetings that focus on the practical issues that we face. This also gives the new employees a better understanding of what we do on a day-to-day basis.

Joe Kassen, general manager
Kitchens Unlimited
Memphis, TN

“If we are bringing somebody in who is new to the industry, there is a somewhat long mentoring program we offer. Frequently, new graduates that we hire work as design assistants and work closely with a senior designer for a rather extended period – anywhere from a year to three or four years – where they learn not just the ins and outs of design, but also learn the proper interaction with clients. We also want to teach them how to sell; selling is a learned skill, but also an art.

We believe that observing and participating are the best ways to learn. We’ve mentored a number of people that way who have become very successful salespeople in our company.

If we hire somebody who is experienced, and depending on their level of experience, then the training is more procedural. For instance, we teach them about our approach to pricing, or how to best interact with the client. If we hired them, then we have vetted them pretty well and know that they are a quality hire, but once they come here, what we try to do is get them to buy into our perspective. We have procedures that are mandatory to follow – I think every business does in one way or another – and by doing so, ultimately, the client is the one who will benefit.

Alan Asarnow, CMKBD, CR, CID
Ulrich Inc.
Ridgewood, NJ

“We’ve had a lot of experience with this situation. We recently hired an employee who was new to the industry, but wasn’t a salesperson. Basically, we had to teach them our paperwork process and who our vendors were that they would be dealing with, and how to properly contact the vendors for purchase orders, or invoicing and billing. In the end, they basically had a little manual that they could refer to. For the experienced person, the training [focuses on our]office procedures: How we do our contracts, how we do our invoices, and how to handle clients when it comes to paperwork.

I feel that often it is easy for an experienced person to step into a new place and design, but other times it is like teaching an old dog new tricks. We also had an employee who had been in the industry to a degree, but was new to cabinet sales. That was simply a matter of teaching them mechanically how certain things might best go together. It was also important to teach them about the processes of ordering and designing.

Leslie Lomont-Relayson, designer/sales
Cabinets by Design
New Orleans, LA