“I can really understand what school leavers are going through in making choices about their future career,” says Russell Mills, Managing Director of Burdens Plumbtec. Burdens is host employer to retail and administration trainees through MEGT Group Training.

“Not only do I hear a lot of my children’s friends going through this, but I had the same experience when starting out.

“I didn’t really know which direction I wanted to go and tried a lot of different careers until I bought a small plumbing and supply operation.

“While the business had a long established name in plumbing, I had only two staff to start with. I had to learn the business from scratch – everything from technical information to running the business.

“I learned early on that growth was possible through having the right people. It’s a bit of trial and error and if you find the wrong people along the way you just can’t let them stay in the organisation. You have to help them move on to something that suits them or it just causes heartache for everyone else around them.

“It is a tough industry with long hours and it does wear you out, so finding and keeping good people is essential.”

“We used to employ trainees ourselves however have moved successfully to using the Group Training program.

“MEGT recruits and employs the trainee and places them with us as the host employer. If it turns out that the trainee is not suitable, we can put them back into the MEGT pool. MEGT is the employer, so they look after them, support them and find a better position for them. And that is much better for a young person: to not just be dropped and left to find their own way.

“We are bit soft on the kids and MEGT helps us if there is a problem. They step in to help us through the issues. And there can be many issues when employing young people.

“We can run our decisions past MEGT staff before implementing them. We respect their judgement, not only because they have a vested interest in the trainee, but also because they have lots more experience employing young people.

“I’m also interested in building skills of all my staff. But I can’t shut the business down completely to train staff and feel I can’t ask them to stay back later at night. They work hard enough during the day!

“So when we train staff, we pull one person out of each store just for the day. We cannot train during our busiest months. We also have to work our way around RDOs!”

“Frontline management is the most immediate training issue. They [our managers] are technically competent, good at customer relations, run the stores very well and are loyal to the organisation. It is the leadership skills where they need training”.

“We need stock control training so it’s administered at store level and more responsive to customers. We also need to continually improve OH&S and computer skills.

“On top of that, there is product knowledge training. There is something like 50,000 items in the bathroom category alone and it takes a year for staff to pick up product knowledge on the job. There is always something fresh coming out. It is moving very quickly.

“I would like to create a product manual and keep it up to date, but where do you start? “

Russell has grown Burdens from one store to successful operations in Balwyn, Ringwood, Lilydale, Ferntree Gully and Cowes. He is obviously reaping the rewards of investing in his staff and skills training is a vital part of Burdens’ strategy to keep their good staff and build customer satisfaction.

Russells’ advice

• Spend time choosing the right trainee.
• Spend time with the young person.
• Understand that they come from a school background which is not a commercial environment.
• Expect failures.
• The more effort you put into staff the more success you will have.