48 The Training School
In an institution employing 9,000 persons there is naturally a continuous shifting of employes which necessitates employment of new people. It is essential that these new pestomers given careful training in the house system before they are allowed to handle the orders. For the purpose of giving such training sstematically and thoroughly, the Training School has been established. New employes spend from three days to three weeks in the school, according to the importance of the work for which they are being trained. They acquire here a general knowledge of how the customer’s order is handled from the time the Mail Opening Department opens the letter until the Shipping Room sends out the goods, and this leads them to appreciate more clearly the importance of performing rapidly and accurately their particular part in the filling of the order.
The school rooms are pleasantly located in the Tower. There are four rooms, and in them a corps or eight teachers, not including minor assistants. devote their time to instructing the beginners, correcting their sample work and gradine them. The efficieney shown in the school rooms determines the position a new employe is capable of filling. Persons whose careless work indicates a disregard of the interests of Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s customers are not retained in the employ of the house. Fortunately, however, this seldom happens, as a comprehension of the magnitude of the business and the splendid, machine-like system with which, it is handled inspires the new employe with respect and loyalty, and an earnest desire to become an efficient part of the great whole.
The picture here shown was taken in the stenographic division of the school. The salaries of stenographers and typists are adjusted before employment by means of a test in speed and accuracy given by the stenographic teacher. After employment they recelve instruction in writing special house letters. Graphophone operators also are trained to take dictation direct from graphophone cylinders (the correspondents of the house dictate chiefly on to graphophone cylinders), and bill clerks learn to operate the billing machines. The stenographic room is not a school of shorthand, etc., in the sense in which a business college is; stenographers and typists must have received training and show a certain degree of efficiency before they can be employed.
Leave a Reply