Progress Residential’s Technical Skills Academy is a comprehensive learning strategy for all of the provider of single-family rental homes’ field personnel, such as service technicians, apprentices, and construction personnel. The program has trained 24 percent of the company’s workforce.
Program Details
The Technical Skills Academy is a multi-modality program. First, participants are enrolled in an online assessment that offers a baseline for instructors before they join the market. Once those assessments are completed, participants are assigned pre-work to help decrease skill gaps before their in-person sessions.
Once ready, the in-person sessions take place over one to four business days, depending on the topic. This could be plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. In these sessions, instructors have pre-built fully functional workstations that can be manipulated to serve different needs. For example, in the plumbing series, in the same workstation, participants can practice repairing toilets, shower valves, sinks, and garbage disposals.
In addition to practicing repairs, participants receive case studies pulled from their actual system of record, as well as pictures/videos of a situation, so they can practice diagnosing and fixing issues.
After each segment, participants are given a skills verification by the certified instructor, who watches them make repairs on the different workstations before allowing them to move into the next segment. Certified instructors work in a rotation to ensure regular training occurs in each market.
Service managers, who manage the service technicians, are provided with plans to build out their own custom workstations to reinforce the learning.
Results
The program helped Progress Residential reduce unworkable work orders by 1.67 percent, beating the company’s goal.
