Ongoing Training
Moving is something most people dread more than root canal surgery.
It's not just the rigors of emptying overstuffed closets and an attic that should have been cleaned out years before. Nor is it all the hours of organizing and packing, and more hours or reorganizing and repacking.
It's not even the fatigue and the short tempers and the lingering questions about whether this move is the right thing to do, after all.
Those are just the preliminaries. Then the movers show up, hulking, often angry men who appear to have been yanked out of a biker bar and pressed into servitude.
With their arrival comes a new set of anxieties as fresh and ugly as the mysterious new gash in the hallway. Will the piano be OK? The lamps? The mirror? Junior's $300 mountain bike? The antique table that belonged to grandmother?
Recognizing how leery people have become of movers, a moving company in Toronto decided to do something so logical and practical it's revolutionary.
It decided to train its workers.
New workers get up to 40 hours training!
Canway built and furnished a house in a warehouse in Mississauga, Ontario. Then it began giving new workers up to 40 hours of training over a two-week period before sending them out on a job.
"On-the-job training usually means the mistakes are on your furniture," says Charles McDaniel, a vice president at Canway. "We'd rather for it to be on the furniture we have in our house rather than furniture you have in yours."
Since it was finished in September 2007, the house has taken a beating. There are gouges and scrapes, and a few doors have been nicked. The carpet's been cleaned a couple of times, and it has already had a new paint job.
Still, says Canway’s Sharon Humes, "I'm hoping by correcting all this damage, we're learning from it."
Then there's Canway’s instructor David Aaronson. His job is to be sure door jam protectors are clipped on, the floors are protected, mirrors and lampshades are properly packed, all the furniture shrink wrapped, blanket wrapped and the load is stowed tightly so it doesn't shift during transport.
It seems to be working; claims are down!
If a flap isn't tucked or tape isn't properly sealed, Kappelman says, "I'll let them either unpack that one or go get another and see that they do it right."
"He makes sure you know what you need to know before you get out of there," says trainee Boyd Carter.
And it seems to be paying off. Not only have damage claims gone down, but a number of other moving companies have toured the facility and indicated they intend to build similar training sites.
Correspondent Michael Sapen contributed to this report
