We were short-staffed again today, and we were busy, as we always are on Mondays.  We were also missing one of our two leads, which means I was the only lead there. I was trying to catch up on work that was not covered for me while I was out on vacation last week. I continued to train the new employee, who is learning and improving, but feeling overwhelmed. She pushes herself very hard and pressures herself to do everything right the first time. I have told her to take her time, that she is doing a great job, and I try to keep her confidence up. I check in on her frequently to let her know that I'm available to answer questions or help her if she is too overwhelmed.

I had planned to speed up the training process, and this is the first employee I have worked with on my accelerated training plan. She learned to do the mail in two and a half weeks as opposed to the usual four weeks. The mail duties didn't cause her any stress, and she liked doing this less challenging task. But she is now taking mail in payments, and she has moved on to more complicated tasks, like reducing and dismissing fines, and entering the payment information in the appropriate way. No one could understand this process in just a few days, but this trainee wants to. She is doing a fine job, she is very motivated, and she's progressing fast. I'm hoping she will master taking mail-in payments in three weeks. Then I'll move her the most difficult phase of training: taking payments from walk in customers.

By training this new employee, I've learned to break down the steps of a duty into very small tasks. I take my time to explain how to do each task, and I also stand by while the trainee performs the duty for the first few times. I give them the freedom to learn in a hands-on way, allowing them to do it themselves, rather than lecture for a long time and make them watch me do the task. Then I step away, but I check in often to see if they have any questions or need any help. I encourage them to ask questions about why we need to do things a certain way, or whether there are different ways of doing things. If they can come up with a better way of doing things, I encourage them to explain their ideas to me. I try to give them the confidence to do their best.