TV Trainer "In the News!"

1/25/07

Wow!

The folks at TV Trainer are humbled, flattered and extremely grateful to have two, prestigious national publications write about us.

After reviewing our product and training methodology (as well as our understanding of the Latino worker and the employers that seek them), we were selected by Restaurant Business to be included in their "50 Great Ideas" (January issue. We're #22 - check it out here).

And if that wasn't enough good news, a few weeks later...

Fortune Small Business magazine recognized TV Trainer as a new approach to teaching "workplace English." You can read that article here.

We're thrilled with the great publicity! However, we're more satisfied helping companies like yours "faster-train and longer-retain your valued Latino employees."

Call me to learn how TV Trainer teaches work skills and English "a job at a time."

Craig Evans for TV Trainer
952.221.1800

craig.evans@tvtrainer.tv

"The High Costs of Employee Turnover."

Got an interesting email today from TJ Schier, a consultant to the restaurant industry. He's come up with a very clever spin on calculating the cost of employee turnover in the restaurant industry. He's calling it, "Turnover Freedom Day."

Here's the jist of what he said...

Training new employees is expensive! Estimates range from $500 - $2,300 per (McDonald's spends $1,600). Costs include; recruiting and hiring replacements, training time, trainer time, lost productivity, uniform costs, etc.

Based on an industry average turnover of 200%, a 30-employee restaurant grossing $800,000 a year, averaging 10% profits could be working up to May 17th just to cover yearly turnover costs. And that's at only $500 training costs/employee.

That should be enough to convince anyone (outside of the CFO, who already knows) of the value of effective training designed to assist in employee rentention.

If you'd like a copy of TJ's article, you can write him here: eletter@qsrmagazine.com
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If you'd like to try the best solution to "faster train and longer retain your valued Latino employees," write me: craig.evans@tvtrainer.tv

"The Year 2006 Was One Of Growth For The Training Industry"

As if the glowing report about the health and growth of the restaurant industry wasn't positive enough, a short two-days later, here comes an equally glowing report on the state of the US training industry.

Training Magazine's 2006 Industry Report was just issued (link here). But before you run and print off your own copy, eyeball a few of these notable quotables!

* $15.8 billion was spent on training products and services this year... up from$13.5B in '05.
* Training budgets are up 7% over '05 figures.
* Companies are averaging $1,273 in training expenses per learner.
* Of Industries spending on training, Manufacturing and Healthcare = 24%
- Healthcare is up 20% over last year.
- Technology training budgets have risen 14%.
* Smaller companies (under 1k employees) are investing the most in training and budgets are growing. They use less classroom settings and computers compared to larger companies. They also show increasing investment in "other" training methods.
* Formal classroom training is down (to 62% from 70%).

This is a wonderful time to be in the training business! We're glad to be a part of the growing movement toward other, new technologies that reach the "digitally-disconnected." If you'd like to learn more, check out our White Paper and latest Research, available on the TV Trainer Home Page. Or call me directly... 952.221.1800.

Craig Evans for TV Trainer
"Faster-train and longer-retain your valuable Latino workers."
"We teach English a-job-at-a-time."

"Real Growth to Hit the Restaurant Industry"

An article dated 12/12/06 appearing in today's QSR Magazine announced even more good news for the Restaurant Industry (and, correspondingly, TV Trainer!).

Here are some of the more notable quotes:

"The restaurant industry will enter its 16th consecutive year of real growth in 2007 according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2007 Restaurant Industry Forecast."

"With the number of restaurant locations in the United States growing to 935,000 in 2007, the number of restaurant jobs will also increase; the industry is expected to add two million jobs in the next 10 years."

Many of the states predicted to have the most employees are also home to the highest population of Latinos.

You can read the entire article, here. Print it out and take it to dinner with you. It's great reading!
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TV Trainer helps businesses "faster-train and longer-retain valued Latino Employees." We do it by "teaching English, a job-at-a-time."

To find our more, contact me (Craig Evans) at 952.221.1800 or write me: craig.evans@tvtrainer.tv

"Turnover up... again" - People Report

11/20/06

I found this in an article in today's NRN.

Acording to a recently released People Report, average hourly worker turnover in the restaurant industry continues to rise and now sits at 107%. Management is also unstable with a turnover average of 29%. Joni Thomas Doolin, People Report founder and chief executive adds that the replacement of 700,000 hourly employees and 15,000 managers in the next 12 months will cost businesses $1.8 billion.

NOTE from Craig: These numbers represent only People Report clients (100 restaurant companies that operate 11,000 businesses. There are over 1,000,000 restaurants in America). In other words, the actual number of employees needed and the costs businesses will incure for employee turnover this next year are TEN TIMES GREATER - 7,000,000 employees, costing $18 billion!

"Restaurant operators are going to have to change the way they tackle their people practices if they are going to survive in a tighter labor market," Doolin warned.

“Within the next five to eight years, the winners and losers are going to be determined by the availability and quality of the employees who work for your businesses,” she said.

The report also noted Latinos now account for 1 in 5 workers (20%).

The complete NRN article is available here:

Now in its 11th year, People Report collects data for more than 100 restaurant companies, which collectively operate more than 11,000 restaurants and generate systemwide sales exceeding $42 billion. The firm’s database contains records for more than 82,000 unit-level managers and 1 million employees.

NOTE from Craig: We can help you decrease turnover. TV Trainer is proven in helping faster train and longer retain your valuable Latino employees. For more information on how we can help, write me: craig.evans@tvtrainer.tv

"They Came Here to Work."

11/16/06

A just-completed study by Dr. Elaine Lacy, research director for the Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies at the University of South Carolina, provides enlightening and encouraging news about America's Newest, Fastest Growing Workforce. Among her findings:

The immigrants were older than we expected and more educated. Mexican males had an average of nine years of education.

Lacy said undocumented immigrants are ineligible for any public assistance, and approximately 70 percent of the Mexican immigrants interviewed were undocumented. "Overuse of public funds is simply not an issue among the state’s Mexican immigrant population," she said.

Other than public education, the only other public service utilized was WIC, a Medicaid program available to qualifying families when their children are born in the United States. Only 15 percent of the families interviewed had children born in the U.S., but not all of those qualified for the WIC program.

Of the 181 immigrants interviewed, only four were unemployed. "They came here to work," Lacy said. "They want to help with living expenses for family members in Mexico and to save money for housing, businesses and retirement in Mexico."

Read more of this report at: http://www.wltx.com/sports/story.aspx?storyid=44073

One last finding to highlight:

Nearly half the respondents said they were making efforts to learn English. One-quarter said they were taking formal English classes, while nearly an additional 25 percent said they were learning from purchased tapes, watching English television and reading English publications. Lacy said 30 percent cited learning the language as the biggest need of the Mexican community.
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TV Trainer recognizes the importance and long-term need for ESL (English as a Second Language). The average American adult knows 10,000-40,000 words. For businesses wanting to teach English to their employees, that can be an expensive and time-consuming proposition. TV Trainer's scenario-based programs, designed to teach how-to-do-a-job, have incorporated a more cost-effective approach to teaching English. It's called VOCATIONAL ESL (or VESL). We've identify and include the English Actions, Words and Items necessary to the performance of a task in each show. Our VESL approach teaches English "a job at a time." This cost-efficient approach starts paying for itself in higher performance and happier, more competent employees from Day One.

Craig Evans for TV Trainer
"Recognized by Restaurant Business Magazine as one of '50 Great Ideas' for the Fast/Casual Dining Industry."

On-the-job Fatality Rates Soar for Latino Workers.

There's little excuse for inadequate training. But when there's danger of injury or death, there's NO excuse for NO training.

Today, Latinos are getting hurt on the job in appauling numbers. In almost all cases, lack of training is the reason. There's NO excuse for that. Not when there are products like TV Trainer. TV Trainer works because we train the way Latino's routinely acculturate (through television). And it's fast.

We can help your workers (and your business) avoid accidents. Call us. 952.221.1800

Craig Evans for TV Trainer.
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On-the-job fatality rates soar for Latino workers.

September 9, 2006
By STEPHEN FRANKLIN and DARNELL LITTLE
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CHICAGO -- Before the accident, he had warned the owner of the small dry cleaner that the pressing machine was old and dangerous. But his boss told him to forget about it, and Mario, fearful of losing his job, didn't say another word.

Then one day last winter, the massive, steaming press collapsed on Mario's left arm, melting the skin, mangling his fist and costing him a $5.70-an-hour job. There was no health insurance, no worker's compensation benefit and no severance pay offered, Mario said.
"If you don't have papers, you work 8 or 10 hours a day, six days a week, and you don't complain," said the muscular, middle-age illegal immigrant from Mexico.

Much of the furor over immigration reform has been about whether undocumented workers like Mario should be allowed to stay in the U.S. or made to leave. But beyond that debate lies an undeniable fact: They face disproportionate dangers on the job.

For most Americans, the workplace is much safer than it was a decade ago. This is not the case for many Latinos, who remain trapped in an earlier, more brutal era of industrialization. They lead throwaway lives, and their plight is nearly invisible because so many live in the shadows.

Over the last decade, Latino workers' fatality rates have soared, outstripping their share of the workforce. With more Latinos on the job, many suffer a hefty dose of injuries from some of the most dangerous jobs, according to government statistics and interviews with union, workplace safety and public health experts, as well as workers.

They are vulnerable because many are immigrants who are illiterate in English, have little understanding of American culture and are grateful for any job, no matter how dangerous. And because many are undocumented and afraid of being deported, they often don't ask questions and don't challenge the boss.

"They shouldn't be dying and they don't even have the same rights to complain. Being illegal, they fear retaliation. This is assuming that they know that what they are doing is dangerous," said Jordan Barab, a workplace safety advocate in Washington, D.C., and a former union health and safety expert.

Because they are not part of mainstream society, there is no clear picture of how many undocumented Latino immigrants are injured or killed on the job. Any statistical evidence is incomplete. But they are widely assumed to constitute the bulk of the nation's estimated 7.2 million unauthorized workers, and most experts say they have driven up the casualty count.

Those who know most and are willing to talk are the doctors who try to mend them, the compensation lawyers who try to get their medical bills paid, and the helter-skelter network of day laborer centers and others that strive to find them help and protection.

Lawyer John Budin, who regularly is consulted by injured workers, said it's common for bosses to refuse to pay medical bills or to warn undocumented employees against filing a worker's compensation complaint.

"I had a guy come in this week whose boss said, 'I'll call immigration and get you deported back to Mexico if you file,'" he said. The worker, he added, is worried and thinking it over.

A sampling of injury reports in federal files tells many of these kinds of stories of inexperienced and illegal workers being killed and injured.

In suburban Maryland in May 2004, a 15-year-old from Guatemala was sucked into landscape cleaning equipment and killed. Federal officials say the teenager had never been told how to use protective equipment or how to turn off the machine.

In South Carolina, 15- and 16-year-old brothers, illegal immigrants from Mexico, were killed minutes after they began working on a trench in 2003 when the walls caved in.

"We have investigated a number of cases where the victim was Spanish-speaking and the training was only in English, and there was little or minimal attempts to translate it into Spanish," said Dawn Castillo, an official with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the research arm for the nation's worker safety and health effort.

Jorge Mejia was doing day construction work in Chicago, hired off the street, when he nearly lost an eye in a fall. He said bosses rarely told him about the dangers of the job, and that day he recalls not wearing any protective equipment.

There were four of them, standing on a scaffold and trying to reach the building. But the crew was not close enough, so three workers leaned toward the fourth as he stretched toward the facade.
Just then the scaffold flipped over, and Mejia fell backward, tumbling three stories. At the hospital, he realized he could only see shadows with one eye.

His back also was badly hurt, and he can no longer lift the way he once did. Because of his health, he stopped working full time. He takes easier jobs two or three times a week, but his earnings are not the same. Despite his back pain and fear of going blind in his right eye, he plans to stay and keep sending money home to his family in Mexico.

"Here I can make $200, $300 in a few days. That's better than $40 a day in Mexico."

When these workers get hurt, they aren't the only ones to pay for their injuries.

Public-health facilities have to swallow the emergency room bills of injured undocumented immigrants not eligible for government support. And then the workers' families have to arrange their own therapies because they cannot receive such support.

And the toll grows.

While non-Latino workplace fatalities dropped 16 percent between 1992 and 2005, Latino workers' deaths jumped 72 percent in the same period. Last year, the fatality rate for Latinos was 4.9 per 100,000 workers, a rate unmatched by any other group. They accounted for more than 16 percent of all deaths though they make up 13 percent of the workforce.

Confusingly, government figures show Latinos' injuries declining in recent years, though hardly as much as they did for others.
But James Platner, head of research for the Washington-area Center to Protect Workers' Rights, a construction union-backed organization, seriously doubts that.

The reality, he and others suggest, is that there is a vast undercount of the injuries because Latino illegal immigrants stray far from public facilities and do not report being hurt.

In the case of Mario, the injured dry cleaner, the State Workers Compensation Commission recently ordered the employer to pay his $10,000 medical bill plus four months of disability pay. His lawyer has been trying to collect the money.

The owner of the dry-cleaning business could not be reached, while a daughter working there would say only that the accident was Mario's fault.

Meanwhile, Mario, who asked not to be further identified, is both scarred by the accident and devastated that he can't go back to the work he enjoyed.

"It changed my life," he said glumly in a relative's basement where he has been living. "I was happy before, cleaning, pressing clothes. Now I'm afraid of heat. Now, I can't do anything."