If getting all of your people to deliver outcomes that are perfectly aligned with your expectations is like herding cats…think of PaT as the pied piper for cats.

I have been building PaT (People and Tasks) for nearly 3 years, it has a number of powerful people management tools including a phenomenal SaaS based training solution.

Now in soft launch phase we are starting to commercialise the product, apart from managing the training requirements of SCS’s 220 FTE, PaT now has a number of paying customers and over 1000 users. Using PaT for SCS we now have the best training platform in our industry (any competitors reading this post we would LOVE to be challenged on this claim and publically demonstrate our capability against yours wherever you are in the world) and consequently we are now developing the best trained staff in our industry. If you’d like this claim for your business read on – PaT can deliver it for you. I guarantee it.

The training outcomes PaT is delivering is truly astonishing.

Our research showed that traditional online training solutions are really nothing more than glorified electronic libraries and most don’t work, they don’t get the buy in from staff and end up costing a lot of time to administer and manage so managers eventually lose interest. Similarly paper based SOPs and Policies that staff get given to take home and sign over the weekend are barely effective when they are sitting in the bottom drawer and forgotten – we know, we tried these traditional methods and it was exhausting, frustrating and expensive to maintain which with the best intentions we often … didn’t.  PaT by contrast is proving to deliver on-going sustainable results for very little effort, the learning environment is dynamic and alive, a key difference is that PaT is a system (in fact it is currently 10 HR systems wrapped into one platform and growing) our clients are reporting unprecedented gains in training outcomes, they are claiming results that they have never been able to achieve before, ever, with (pleasantly) surprisingly low effort once the system is set up.

We think it may be the most powerful training platform in the world currently. Here’s why:

1. PaT gets results (honestly and truly) – here is a snapshot of one of the key (live) reports that shows how we achieved an increase of H&S compliance from 65% to 95% in just two weeks across 220 staff!!! this also proves how automatic functionality in PaT allows us to maintain high compliance ongoingly with virtually no involvement from senior management. Our other customers are all experiencing similar results. Below we explain why and how this happens.
   
2. Powerful metrics – PaT drives performance through two key metrics.
   
   Certification is a TRAINING KPI that staff manage by themselves. This represents all the modules that a staff member must know and maintain certification in, related to their job. Users control their own certification level. To maintain 100% staff simply have to read modules and/or watch videos and complete quizzes on time. If their compliance does drop (e.g. they missed a deadline(s)) they can rectify it immediately by passing the module(s).
   Task Compliance is a PERFORMANCE KPI, if a training module is elected to be Auto Escalating (see below) e.g. it is critical, PaT automatically assigns a task to staff if they miss a training deadline (one of the beautiful things about PaT is that she quickly ends up doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you, once PaT is established there are numerous automated process she conducts on behalf of supervisors which saves them oodles of time – and makes them look good :).
   1. Staff are empowered to negotiate new deadlines and provided they deliver within the new deadline they still maintain 100%. This is an important philosophy in the system that teaches integrity and promotes advanced task management skills. If all of your staff are excellent task managers you won’t find this useful…
   2. If staff miss deadlines i.e. they don’t bother to negotiate and manage new deadlines, PaT reduces their Task Compliance KPI – it takes a year for each infraction to clear.
   3. PaT Performance KPIs are regarded more seriously than the Training KPI’s however both can be used effectively in a legislatively compliant performance management process providing indisputable proof of poor performance and/or unsatisfactory training compliance. Both issues are addressed in the induction modules which instruct new users that compliance should remain above at least 90% and modules are expected to be considered extensions of the Roles and Responsibilities/Duties detailed in their employment contract. Users need to pass a test confirming they understand this as part of their PaT induction meaning that the stage is set for performance management if needed later.
      1. Linking either or both of these KPIs to employment contracts, bonuses and promotional opportunities is a highly effective way to ensure compliance across your organisation and ensure all of your people get on the same page and their outcomes are aligned with your expectations. We call this aligning tactics with strategy (or singing from the same hymn sheet :).
3. Auto Escalation (AE) – this is one of PaTs most powerful features, it guarantees compliance or the CEO (or nominated Senior Manager) finds out.
   1. AE is a task management feature that appears in different areas of the PaT platform, with regards to the training modules this guarantee is invaluable for critical (legislative) compliance issues e.g. H&S, MPI, Policies, Employment law etc…
      1. If an AE task is not completed by a deadline, the staff members Task Compliance KPI reduces and PaT automatically creates a new AE task for their supervisor who is assigned a new (but related) task (with a  deadline) to fix the noncompliance whereby the supervisor’s Task Compliance is now under threat. This is considered to be a bad thing, once the importance of this Performance KPI hits home (i.e. the importance of this KPI is realised)  how long it takes for everyone to realise the importance of the KPI varies but usually an entire organisation is on board within 3 months provided it is driven from the top. It must be driven from the top, just as racecar wont perform to its potential without a gifted driver, PaT will struggle to perform without senior managers driving and sanctioning it for the first 6 – 12 weeks after which PaT will shine and deliver outstanding and unprecedented results.
      2. The AE process is supported with alerts and the ability to negotiate deadlines.
         1. If the alerts and deadlines are ignored PaT automatically repeats the cycle escalating to a higher level each time and creating an AE task for the supervisor’s supervisor and so on and so forth through to the CEO or nominated senior manager.
         2. User feedback tells us that (serious) conversations triggered by AE tasks that reach the CEO usually only happen once or twice at which stage the AE process becomes self managing from that point forward.
   2. If this all sounds a bit Big Brotherish – it is but the good big brother who looks out for your best interests (not the oppressive one) if it starts off sounding a bit daunting the reality is that people with high integrity who want to perform well in their role all end up loving PaT and discover it is a wonderful tool that improves their effectiveness around task management and compliance upstream with managers, personally and downstream with staff, it’s the staff who don’t like being held accountable to their commitments or struggle managing deadlines e.g. keep saying yes but don’t manage or communicate deadline breakdowns that end up struggling with how PaT exposes this. That said once this behavior is revealed the job of developing desirable task management and good learning behavior can begin. Many users end up getting the message and self correct discovering you can not shortcut or obfuscate the PaT system, others need coaching.
4. Smartphone Audits – This clever functionality takes the learning out of the classroom and into the real world using your smartphone. The downfall with online training platforms is that the process of validating knowledge is limited to logical, close ended questions, either multi-choice or yes/no testing constructs. People can cheat these types of quizzes and the quality of quizz varies between authors. With smartphone audits there are six key benefits:
   1. Personal. Supervisors validate a subordinate’s knowledge in person instead of just an online quiz which can be impersonal and miss vital clues that would otherwise enrich the student’s education.
   2. Open ended questions. The audits are usually open ended questions e.g. show me, explain to me why/how/where type questions that the supervisor can assess for correctness or gaps. This can not be done with an online quiz.
   3. Train to the Gap. The most valuable use of training time for any  supervisor is to train the bits a student does not know, smartphone audits quickly identify and dispense with what a student does know and highlights what they don’t, this means valuable time spent on training is targeted to what is relevant to the student and the supervisor is not wasting time using a shotgun approach hoping the right bits stick.
   4. Optimised training. The bulk of the training responsibility is pushed back to the student where it should be (it’s their career) using the on-line quiz method and the smartphone audit identifies any gaps, this process optimises the use of everyone’s time.
   5. Situational learning. Taking tests out of the classroom and into the real world puts learning in context. It enables use of the 5 senses thereby immersing the students learning journey in reality (not theory) which is a proven way for most people grasp concepts better and faster.
   6. Fast. Most audits are less than a minute if the student knows the subject matter. This allows supervisors to canvass lots of staff and lots of modules very quickly.
5. Train anything to anyone. A lot of training platforms try to lock you in with their publishing software or they build the content for you and charge you like a wounded bull. By contrast PaT is completely open, it comes with a nifty module publisher that helps you create your own training modules in a paint by numbers fashion through a process of dragging and dropping “blocks” (decisions, tips, warnings, do’s, don’ts, comments etc…) of info into your document and providing colourful icons to help illustrate, break up, emphasise and generally make your content more interesting to consume (click here for an example sop-conduct-smartphone-audits-for-supervisors ) you can link video content from any external source simply by pasting the hyperlink(s) to the module (like this one PaT induction video) or you can create content in your favourite publisher (word, powerpoint, photoshop etc…) and save and use these files to educate your people, this is particularly useful if you already have a lot of content but lack a system to track who is compliant. PaT is a full featured, flexible, rich, multimedia environment for teaching.
6. Re-certification cycles. In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus published his hypothesis on what we all know instinctively – the Forgetting Curve. Simply put, if you are only exposed to knowledge once most of us will quickly forget. To improve retention we need to expose ourselves repeatedly to the subject matter until eventually it sticks. If you don’t care if your staff actually learn and you just want to tick boxes then any training platform will do the trick. But if you actually care about improving your staffs capability then you need to repeatedly educate them to create foundational knowledge and then as you build layers each layer needs to be repeated so that it becomes cemented. Tedious? yes. Effective? yes.PaT wraps every module in a certification cycle that you design e.g. once a month for 3 months, twice a year for 2 years, once every two years indefinitely – you choose. PaT then manages the achievement of the recertification cycle through the Certification KPI and if the module is really important then it is made Auto Escalating then the AE process will supercharge the learning journey.

If you’d like to learn more about PaT or you’re interested in understanding how specifically PaT could assist your business drop me a line at brad@peopleandtasks.com. Whilst PaT is in soft launch phase (Go Live is planned for Q1 2017) we are offering preferential pricing in perpetuity as a founding customer and if you are an SCS customer we are offering brilliant deals.

What can you use PaT’s training capability for?:

1. Build brand ambassadors – got a story you need to educate your resellers with, PaT can do that.
2. H&S compliance – PaT has a special H&S module, it is probably the best online H&S system in NZ/AU.
3. Systemise your business – load all of your SOP’s, Policies and Company values into PaT and evolve into a learning organisation. Systems are the soul of a company.
4. Manage your suppliers – develop QA and compliance modules so they fully understand your exacting standards.
5. Develop better understandings with your customers – we’re releasing “how to manage SCS” modules to all of our clients soon so when/if staff at a customer leave there is no gaps and a robust handover.
6. Succession planning.
7. Sales training.
8. Cash handling.
9. User guides for software systems.
10. Inductions.
11. Anything.

Who is currently using PaT?:

• A logistics company (hint: the largest pureplay 3PL in NZ).
• An iconic NZ retailer.
• A national car hire business.
• A large well known apparel importer/distributor.
• One of NZ’s most loved electronic brands.

What type of organisations would benefit from PaT?:

• Retailers – teaching retail staff how to sell, manage customers, manage inventory and cash handling.
• Importers/distributors – managing H&S, creating brand ambassadors through their distribution networks and teaching company values.
• Schools, supermarkets, mechanics, hairdressers, advertising companies, cleaning companies, pizza delivery businesses and candlestick makers.
• Any organisation that employs people and desires to offer industry leading training for their staff.