A new opportunity for learning - Small Business Institute

Nation's Business, Oct, 1995 by Michael Barrier

The Small Business Institute plans to make training employees and owners simpler and less expensive.

The small manufacturing firm started as a family operation, with husband, wife, and one son. Before long, the business had grown to 60 or 70 employees, but because the owners had not learned all the fundamentals of operating a small company, they had to work day and night to keep ahead or their firm's growth.

As the owners added employees, they provided the workers with on-the-job skill training, but they couldn't train anyone to take on the management responsibilities they themselves were still struggling to master.

"I think that's typical of most small businesses," says Roger Jask, who as a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has talked with the owners of that company and of many other small firms. "They grow, they prosper--and then all of a sudden they get to the point where they need to train theft employees to make them more effective. And they've never thought about it--they don't know what to train them in and how to train them."

What such businesses need, Jask believes, is a way to catch up on the training that, ideally, they would have done while they were growing.

Jask heads the Chamber's Federation Programs and Services Division, which this fall win begin offering such a training program. Called the Small Business Institute (SBI), it will give small-business owners, managers, and employees an opportunity to educate themselves in seven aspects of operating a small business, at a low cost in time and money.

At the core of the SBI program are 35 books, five under each of these headings:

* Marketing and sales.

* Budget and finance.

* Legal issues.

* Human relations and communications.

* Improved productivity.

* Quality and customer service.

* Supervision, management, and leadership.

Most of the books are designed to be read in less than two hours; one book under each heading is longer and more in-depth.

When Brenda Schissler, owner of a Louisville, Ky., company called Staffmasters, heard of the program, her first thought was, "It's finally something for us with small office staffs." For such firms, she says, seminars and the like, however useful they may be, can be too demanding of the staff's time. "When we have two or three people gone at one time," she says, "we just aren't functioning."

Schissler's company provides temporary workers of many kinds through two offices in Louisville; she has 14 permanent employees in those offices, and she needs to add two more. Through the SBI program, members of her staff can be trained "at their own pace," she says. "That was the most exciting thing to me about the program."

She first heard of SBI when Jask met with the Chamber's 100-person Small Business Council last fall to test the idea on the group. Schissler and 13 other council members volunteered to help shape the curriculum.

Says Jask: "We bounced off of them all the subjects" that were covered by the 350 or so books published by Crisp Publications, of Menlo Park, Calif., a leading publisher of training books for business.

"They selected the ones that they felt were the strongest for small businesses," he says. In addition to being clearly and simply written, the Crisp books met another criterion. The members of the Small Business Council had told Jask that they wanted the cost of such materials kept "very affordable--under $20," he says. Most of the SBI books cost $13.95, with the longer book in each category priced at $19.95. All can be purchased individually.

Most members of the council agreed that taking a test after reading each book might motivate their employees to stick with the program--if, like the books themselves, the tests were short and to the point. Accordingly, each book will come with a test that can be filled out and returned to the SBI testing center; passing the test brings with it a certificate of completion from the Chamber and "continuing education units" (CEUs).

The Chamber is already licensed to award CEUs, under the requirements laid down by the Washington-based International Association for Continuing Education and Training. "To give a CEU," explains Christopher Thiel, the Chamber's director of business conferencing, "you must do certain things there must be a curriculum, it must be organized in terms of time and reading material, there must be a test, the test must be graded."

Eventually, Thiel says, he would like to see the SBI program evolve into an equivalent of the program under which automobile mechanics are certified. But the tests will by no means be mandatory for purchasers, Jask points out: "They can just buy the books to use for learning."

For now, "most people use CEUs to show their employers they are staying current in their job," Jask says. An employee who has earned CEUs in a management area, he notes, can be a stronger candidate for promotion.

It's this aspect of the program--the opportunity it offers not only to train employees but also to increase their involvement in the business--that may be the most appealing to some small-business owners.