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Producers and dealers provide training and schooling. Take advantage of this! They are worthwhile!
MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER PRODUCT SHOW IN-SERVICE TRAINING IS A MUST IN ALL SECTORS, INCLUDING THE PARQUET INDUSTRY
Photo – Lägler
Long gone are the days when producers/dealers offered their products to professional end users and the contact was mainly top down. These days, customers (i.e. parquet fitters in our case) are not only buyers, but at the same time they are also one of the major partners for producers/dealers. This means that buyers-partners have to sell what is offered to their own end customers to obtain an ideal result. And so, it comes as no surprise to learn that training sessions on the premises of manufacturers/dealers or even training sessions on a customer’s own premises are on the up. Moreover, we have also noticed that companies are increasingly thinking beyond their own products and are offering more general training, which is proving a big hit. This is not surprising when you consider how hard it is at the moment to find professionally trained workers. In recent years many workers have had to be trained on the job virtually from scratch.
Training offered by traders is popular What we’ve also noticed is that there is an ever growing demand for extra training from workers themselves and that producers/dealers simply have to respond. The reasons for the growing demands are quite obvious. In various professional fields, including that of the parquet industry, time certainly doesn’t stand still and there is a constant flow of new rules, guidelines, and product developments. Think, for instance, of the various ecological requirements which you don’t only learn from
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some professional association, but also you have to check how your suppliers react specifically to those elements. Obviously, there is also more and more specialisation and expansion within the professional field at the same time. The parquet industry is constantly broadening its horizons and therefore requires more specialist knowledge. Floor fitters who have that knowledge can operate in several fields where the competition is less severe and the related remuneration is more attractive. Then, there’s the fact that if you take such training courses, you are one of the first operators to discover where the market is heading. You are literally in the forefront of new developments and can capitalise on your own audacity. Finally, there’s the element of self-improvement. You think here not just purely in terms of improving your professional abilities, but also your business skills or social skills.
How does this work? In this article we investigate how these training courses run and verify a number of things. We ask questions such as: Are free training courses offered or not? Are there different sessions? Are certificates issued as proof of professional competence, for instance, with the use of UV or LED curing machines or the application of colour? What we notice is that the big boys certainly aren’t afraid to deploy plenty of resources and that they are spending huge sums of money,
