BEAR Press Release
Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention (BEAR) recently announced there will be two special meetings that will be held on Feb. 18, 2016. The first one of the day will be in the Alumni Room at the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center on the USU Eastern Campus. It will start at 8 a.m. that morning. The second meeting (a lunch and learn) will be held at Price City Hall at noon in room 207.
Speaking that day in both the regular BEAR meeting and at lunchtime will be Chuck Acklin, a well known consultant in helping businesses to get through major challenges while at the same time helping them to grow.
Acklin is well known as a wizard in the business problem solving community, and he and his company, VOLTI, have developed ways to help businesses solve major problems. Interestingly, some of his roots in development of the process he uses took place in Carbon County.
In the 1984 he helped develop a program in the local area to help women who were administrative assistants to succeed in their field. The program was administered by the local Utah State Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.
“At the time the success rate for secretaries was only about 24 percent,” he said in an interview in late January. “We worked on that program for a year and eventually ended up with a success rate of 85 percent.”
Acklin went on to be the Director of Training and Development for Mrs. Fields Cookies where he was highly successful in the areas of team building, training and retention. Later he worked for Help-You-Sell Real Estate. He also was a partner in The Game of Work. His role was to standardize systems and to innovate. Acklin’s philosophy all along has been to align employees with company expectations.
VOLTI, the company Acklin now owns, is a firm that shifts attitudes with tactics for owners, executives, managers and supervisors to innovate and retain key people in their organizations.
The early stages of the program began in 1968 when Acklin was a science teacher at the middle-school level. He helped students to recognize their own abilities, when others wouldn’t. Many who were touched by him have gone on to some outstanding careers.
“Since VOLTI started (in 2000), I’ve observed and I’ve noticed disruptive changes companies must face,” he said. “Disruption brought on by economic downturns, digital technology, government regulations, demands for higher quality lower cost products, gender differences, age group characteristics and global market shifts are causing what worked in the year 2000 not to work now. And what works now may be passe’ within six months.”
Acklin said the traditional training model most use does not work anymore and that it always did suffer from a loss of learning, with many who attend sessions retaining only 21 percent of what they were taught after only 30 days.
He also points out that the Millennial generation is not interested in slick presentations, but is more motivated by The programs as presented will be free to all attendees. Those attending the morning session will find light refreshments being served and the lunch group will find a pizza lunch awaiting them.