Markey's saves $10,000 per year in travel with Trakstar Learn

About Markey's

Established in 1959 with over 60 years of experience in the event technology space, Markey’s prides itself as the provider of the “best service” and “most diverse and reliable equipment” in the industry. They supply equipment for audiovisual equipment and staging for events, in-house support services for hotels, convention centers, corporations, rental services, and production services, among others. With office locations throughout the Midwest, Central Florida, Southwest Texas, Colorado and Washington D.C., their workforce is proud, unified, and trustworthy.

With multiple locations and ongoing changes and upgrades to professional equipment, an effective training program is necessary - not only to protect investments in technology, but to ensure the safety of employees.

Onboarding Made Easy

With new hires in particular, using Learn helps Markey’s hit the ground running. Those hires are assigned the necessary prerequisite courses in Learn before their in-person training. This helps them eliminate some of the “death by PowerPoint” Chandler notes that new hires previously felt, understand safety protocols before they are even on-site, and reduce the amount of time trainees have to be on-site.

Part of Markey’s onboarding requires quarterly in-person, hands-on training at their headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Inside their warehouse, they have over 5,000 square-feet of training space. When they aren’t listening to PowerPoint presentations and instead using what they’ve learned before arriving, new employees have shown better retention rates, faster absorption, and better critical thinking on the job.

As an example, Markey’s uses Learn to assign courses to new hires who will go to different venues to set up their audio-visual equipment. The hires will take Learn courses before their practicum and come in with the knowledge they need. Markey’s then creates situations within the warehouse where employees must use that training. Using this technique allows them to ensure new employees are ready for in-field work as well as help make sure their courses within Learn teach the subject matter effectively.

Ongoing Training Opportunities

In the audiovisual industry, things are constantly changing, adapting, and improving. New equipment, technologies, and buildings are always a factor in training and compliance with new and existing employees.

Learn supports Markey’s day-to-day operations by helping to provide on-going training for employees. For example, Markey’s has had staff out of a show, setting up equipment, only to realize they don’t know how to use something.

Using Learn, Ted can assign the course for that specific tool to the individual or team to train themselves on the spot. This eliminates downtime, mitigates risk, and saves Markey’s money. In the past when situations arose where no one knew how to do something, they would have to fly someone to the event.

Travel costs require flights, hotel stays, meals, and more - and Markey’s noted that costs were rising. As the company embraced remote work and hired more personnel around the country, they need to find a way to train people without the travel.

For companies with multiple training and development coordinators, the return on investment of Trakstar Learn is clear. Not only have they eliminated travel, they are pooling knowledge to one source of truth and using that to train all employees. Streamlining onboarding and training helps with overall safety, retention, and compliance.

Why Markey's Chose Trakstar Learn

Of course, other factors went into Markey’s choosing Trakstar for its learning management needs. An implementation time that outpaces the competition helped alongside Trakstar’s industry-leading customer support.

“Really the deciding factor with Trakstar Learn for me was the incredible customer support response time,” said Ted Chandler. “To have the Trakstar Learn support staff have the same day response was the deciding factor for me.”