FINAST, LOWE'S MOVE TO COMPANY-WIDE CBT

CHRIS O'LEARY

CHICAGO -- Lowe's Food Stores, Winston-Salem, N.C., and Finast, Maple Heights, Ohio, are furthering the benefits gained at the front end from computer-based training by moving toward company-wide use of the technology.

Lowe's, which cut cashier training time in half and reduced produce shrink through better product identification, is now designing interactive programs to improve customer service and store manager performance.

Finast plans to educate employees in disciplines as varied as telephone etiquette, use of electronic and voice mail, federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines, deli operations and cash office management through computer training software.

Executives from both chains spoke about the benefits of moving to computer-based training during a session at the Food Marketing Institute's annual convention here this month.

"We certainly have appreciated some savings in terms of reduced training hours and improved shrinkage" through programs that train cashiers in register operations and produce identification, said Henry Edwards, executive vice president of human resources for Finast.

Finast, which rolled out CBT to 42 stores in February, cut average training time from 24 hours to 12 hours and projects a 14-month return on investment, Edwards told SN following the presentation.

Lowe's reduced training time from 16 hours to less than eight hours and estimates the system will have paid for itself in about three years' time, said Mike Lebo, director of human resources, who also spoke at the session. He noted the longer return on investment period was due to the higher costs of hardware and software in 1993, when his company introduced the system.

Both executives said CBT improved cashiers' ability to correctly identify produce, and that, in turn, reduced losses due to shrink. Cashiers uncertain of an item's price frequently guess a lower price to avoid a customer confrontation.

"We are currently up to around a 90% pass rate requirement on produce identification, which means that now there are [about] 30 items that a cashier might not know out of 300," Lebo said.

Before using the produce identification program, cashiers averaged an 80% pass accuracy rate for produce items, which meant they were unable to identify about 60 items. "We found that was too many," he said.

"We were much worse than that," said Edwards after the presentation, "but now we are up to about 90% to 92%" product identification rate. Employees are better trained through interactive computer programs in part because they are less reticent about asking for instructions to be repeated, he said.

"People have the tendency not to admit they haven't learned something," Edwards said. "In the privacy of the cubicle, however, they have no problem going back and asking a question again."

"There's no peer pressure," Lebo added.

Both Finast and Lowe's computer-based training systems are provided by Strategic Systems, Des Plaines, Ill.

Lowe's is now designing interactive video-based programs to improve employee customer service. The program will simulate various scenarios such as a customer demanding money back on a product. Trainees must determine how to handle the situation by choosing from multiple choice responses.

"This program gives the employee a nonthreatening situation in which they can have an opportunity to select how they would handle it and learn from the experience," Lebo said.

Lebo acknowledged that the introduction of CBT was initially seen as a threat by some employee trainers, who feared they were being replaced by computers.

"We had some significant psychological barriers to overcome early on in this process," he said. "We had some resentful employees because they thought we were replacing them and eliminating a significant part of their role in the company."

Lowe's officials had to reassure the former trainers and convince them that their new role would be to work with new employees to reinforce skills learned via computer, as well as monitoring new employee progress.