I was at a client site not too long ago when I witnessed an all too familiar scene. A customer returned to retrieve her vehicle, and it was at this point that the cashier determined that an employee from the previous shift had taken her keys home with him. If you’ve spent any time at all working in valet parking operations, you have surely experienced this first hand at least once. Valet operations are fast paced and have a lot of moving parts within them (quite literally!), and in order to prevent customer keys from being misplaced, clear procedures that all employees adhere to are a must.

I am often asked whether the training programs we create for cashiers, valets and other frontline positions include how to operate location equipment. As I prepare to respond, a rapid succession of the numerous equipment brands and generations of each that exist around the country runs through my mind. The direct response to this question is that we don’t include instructions on the use of specific technologies, but it isn’t just because of the voluminous task that would be involved in achieving this. It’s also because there is a better way to accomplish the objective of training employees on the usage of facility equipment, and we DO build this into our training programs and you should too.

Anyone who has ever received any type of presentation skills training probably has learned some version of the Three P’s: Prepare Your Content, Know Your Participants, and Practice! Practice! Practice! Even when we follow these rules to the game, why is it the throat will still tighten, the hands still sweat and the overall panic crawls up the back of our neck in the minutes leading to the floor being handed over?