Previously, Payless depended on a number of methods to bring new associates to their desired performance levels. One of the business differentiators for Payless is to ensure that work proceeds in the Payless way. Over the years, Payless has found the most optimal manner of conducting business. It is these business practices that enables the company to keep its costs low.

Ensuring that the best business practices are conveyed to new employees had been a challenge. Traditional methods (notably OTJ, workshops and videotapes) were at the forefront of training.

In addition, Payless distributed volumes of paper documentation to its stores outlining procedures and practices. With thousands of distributed locations, maintaining and managing these paper-based documents added to Payless' challenge.

Some of the printed documentation has found its way online (see example on the right), however it is framed in an unintuitive and difficult to use DOS environment.

In all, Payless was spending more than $3M annually to train its associates.

In addition to the cost and time considerations, tribal training, as Payless describes word of mouth training, often led to inaccurate indoctrination. Every time information was handed down from one employee to another, it often became degraded. This information erosion led to a loss of information integrity. The result was that some practices were no longer being done the Payless way.

On a technological front, Payless had been using older 286-based systems in its stores. These systems were used to handle all of the in-store computing, some computer-mediated tasks as well as to deliver and view text-only online reference manuals.

Around 1993, Payless began exploring alternatives to traditional training. Coincidental to this early exploration, Payless began to pursue upgrading its information infrastructure. An opportunity was seized by the training group and the early stages of RPSS were born.

© 2000 Payless ShoeSource.