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For ten years Casino Surveillance News has either been training casino surveillance personnel on its own or helping others to do it. For most of those years I was also either Casino Surveillance investigator or a supervisor.
In all of this time, the basic concept has been that casino surveillance trainers jealously guarded their materials--their "stock in trade"--including presentations, written materials and especially video materials of cheats and thieves and other crooked activity. I subscribed heartily to this, because it seemed that, in a limited business niche like this, if one gave away one's materials, soon one would no longer have a market.
Recent events, including a collapsing economy, and the resultant collapse of businesses associated with casinos, has demanded a fresh look.
Why, in fact, should consultants demand that casinos bring them back?
With the amount of personnel turnover in the casino business, the people I trained are very seldom in the same casino three or four years later. Some of them have been promoted, some have moved to higher positions in other casinos, and some have even gotten out of the employee relationship, just as I did. This would seem to require that trainers return, again and again, to casinos where they had been, ensuring return visits.
Yet very seldom did this actually happen. The next time the casino needed external training, they either did it themselves or brought in a different trainer, with no benefit whatever to the original one. Outside training is expensive, and can seldom be justified when budgets are tight. Currently, training budgets for casinos, especially in Security and Surveillance, have never been tighter. In many places they have been cut out altogether.
Outside training is a temporary solution to an ongoing problem.
So why guard those materials so jealously? It simply ensures that no one ever gets the benefit of the years of experience, the video libraries, the articles and presentations painstaking written.
IThere are a few other things that have entered into this new concept: Both the best of the places that I worked and the best of the places I trained in had formal training programs for their Surveillance staff, with specific requirements which had to be met to qualify for promotions or pay raises. I contributed in the design of some of these programs. They are in fact the only way for a Surveillance department to maintain its quality and reliability of performance without regularly scheduled outside training.
Yet each casino had to basically re-invent the wheel for its training programs. There was no available outline, and materials had been so jealously guarded over the years that there was very little training material available for such a program. There was very little that could be universally applied, if a person went to a new casino as an operator/investigator, or accepted a promotion in another property, or even if he took on a new position working for the same company or tribe in a new casino.
Therefore my fresh look demanded a new idea, a new way for casinos to maintain the standards of training and knowledge in their Surveillance departments, despite personnel turnovers and despite nose-diving training budgets. See the new concept at this address: http://www.casinosurveillancetraining.com
Casino Surveillance News is introducing a new concept in training Surveillance and Security personnel. This idea is going to royally tick off some people, specifically other casino surveillance consultants and trainers. I am going to make it unnecessary for any more "return visits from the doctor" for training new or inexperienced surveillance personnel.
I am no longer selling training seminars as such, except by special request.
What I am advocating and selling is complete casino surveillance training programs, designed to make a casino entity or gaming regulation and compliance staff completely self-sufficient in its training needs.
What this means is that I will custom-design for a casino a permanent, self-sufficient surveillance training program, based on my own experience and the experience of people I have worked for, worked with and trained under, based on my studies of the law, of cheats, scams, internal and external theft and cheating in the real casino world.
My training programs have for many years been successful in the casinos I have worked.
The program will take a person from green trainee up to the point where he is ready to manage a Surveillance department on his own, when combined with the actual experience he acquires over his years.
This is not a two-day or ten-day training seminar. This is all of the formal training a person will need, and it can be stretched out over two or three years. It will be of benefit to new operators, green trainees, experienced personnel, and even for those ready to move up to Surveillance Managerial level.
The program would include surveillance training presentations incorporating real-life video, photos, written materials, exercises and tests to determine whether the person who took the class actually understood and can apply the material. Each presentation or class would have a position in a specific training sequence.
Each presentation would be a part of a unified, complete and comprehensive casino surveillance training program designed so that a casino Surveillance department, working on its own or together with Human Resources, can maintain the training level of its staff at a high standard despite personnel turnover, without need of outside contracted trainers brought in at great expense. It allows training on a schedule which meets the needs of the casino itself, rather than the quick in-and-out typical of all casino Surveillance training to date.
Typically, a trainer or consultant comes in, being paid a high daily rate, and due to budgets and schedules, only a small minority of the staff gets trained.
I know. I have done it for years. It is one of the parts of the business that always bothered me most. A year after I have been there, the people I trained have moved on or been promoted, and the casino that paid for the training is back where it started with green trainees and people with some experience but no formal training.
One of the problems in one casino I worked for was that we did have a complete training program; we trained people up to a very high standard, and then they moved on to another casino that was willing to pay them a much higher rate. We had trained people that were working in every casino surveillance room in town, at better pay than we were making. But our ongoing training program ensured that our own people were always up to standards.
A program owned by the casino would no longer require that whole departments scramble their schedules in order to send only a few for a training program. The program could be maintained on an individual-by-individual level under supervision of the Director. It could be run as often and for as many years as needed.
Or it could be scheduled in such a way that new trainees would attend classes together; classes could be put together for first-year investigators who are beyond the trainee level, and separate classes could be held for those people ready and wanting to move up to Supervisor level.
The point is that the casino would own the license for the program and could administer it as often, as many times as needed, to keep the training of new personnel up to standards set by the program.
Such a program would be administered by the Director of Surveillance, with information to Human Resources as to who has completed the various levels of training.
Or it could be administered, in Indian casinos, by the gaming regulatory authorities. Some of the materials included are vital for gaming inspector positions, after all, and a requirement from Gaming Regulation that observer/investigators pass tests on particular areas is backed up by NIGC regulations requiring Surveillance personnel be trained.
The Director and Human Resources would be in charge of ensuring that personnel passed the tests, retrained in areas where needed, and would ensure that people who got moved into upper level positions had the training necessary to handle their responsibilities.
In order to give this new concept a fine kick-off,
a good beginning,
I will give the first five casinos
who purchase a training program,
customized for their needs,
a full 35 percent
off the purchase price
Inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com
A custom Casino Surveillance Training Program can be designed for your casino
in approximately three weeks,
and put into action immediately.
Inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com
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