By Josh Tafoya, Technical Trainer
I’ve been here at Bold for just shy of 15 years. During that time, I’ve worked with hundreds of our customers on one level or another. Whether it was related to my original job in the support office, during various times when I worked as an implementation technician, or in my current job as a trainer. I’ve helped monitoring centers of all sizes: retail and wholesale, public, private and governmental.
There are several monitoring centers I’ve worked with who have had the same staff in the same roles for over ten years. But of course, there are also many situations where the staff has changed since the original training happened. For various reasons, what we sometimes see is that nobody currently working in the monitoring center was originally trained by Bold. The training has been passed along to each user, sometimes simply by whoever was working their first shift with them.
Now, I’ve visited several sites where the original staff was promoted or made lateral moves, but are still with the company. The problem arises when they are then asked to perform Manitou related tasks, even when their new role doesn’t include the monitoring center. This is where retraining comes in.
I want to take a moment to explain how retraining is different from BoldGenius and Manitou Elite Certification. BoldGenius is great for new operator training, where previously trained staff can fill in the specifics that relate to that particular monitoring center. Manitou Elite Certification is intended for monitoring centers who have been using Manitou to a very high degree of usefulness but wish to improve their processes. It is absolutely an excellent tool for recognizing immediate concerns, as well as planning for long-term growth and success. However, the retraining I’m referring to is the type that is sometimes needed between original BoldGenius training and Manitou Elite Certification.
Sites I’ve retrained have ranged from small retail operations to mid-size monitoring centers, and my experience with them is very similar. At first, there is some skepticism that they will learn anything new. Especially from younger staff members who have been doing this for two whole years.
But without being the person that did the original training, without doing the deep business analysis that comes with Manitou Elite Certification, and basing it simply on the repeatable training that I conduct, what I find is every single learner has learned something new. Not just keyboard shortcuts or how to better use the Plans screen. Every time I work with a group who has already been using Manitou, I’ve been able to teach something new which saves the users time and/or money, because they had been doing it the hard way. Whether it’s using programming to cancel alarms when the restore signal comes in or using the copy/paste functionality in the zones screen, it’s something that has saved time. Often, these users learned how to use Manitou via brief training and trial and error, and they were never shown some of the possibilities.
Retraining is not for every site. But if it has been over ten years since you were trained or if you don’t have any remaining staff that was originally trained by Bold, you’ll find it beneficial!