Most business managers understand the crucial importance of employee training, but often find themselves lost when it comes to implementing an effective training regime. Making employee’s show up, pay attention to, and retain information from training events can be a nightmare for even the best managers, so where should your company’s leaders begin when it comes to making employee training count?
The truth is that employee training doesn’t have to be a slog, nor does it even have to be exuberantly expensive. By following some common-sense tips and avoiding frequent pitfalls encountered by managers who plunge in without planning ahead, you can make employee training count and have your workers educated and ready to succeed in no time.
Planning is everything
It seems intuitive that the vital importance of planning your sessions out ahead of time is a given, but a surprisingly large amount of managers give little, if any, thought to how their training programs will be implemented. Of even more importance is the planning for what comes next; training is more than a one-time deal, and needs consistent follow up sessions to have any real impact. Before you even begin creating your employee training regime, then, consider how you’ll check in with your employees later down the line, and ensure you have a staff ready to collect feedback for future training sessions, too.
Part of making sure your planning process is sufficient to ensure results is to determine your goals ahead of time, and outline how you intend to meet them. Rather than lecturing everybody in a stuffy room for an hour before releasing them back to their workplaces, your managers should focus on achieving concrete, pre-planned results that are specific and measurable. This doesn’t just ensure better learning and higher levels of engagement from your workers, but also helps your business leaders determine if money is being spent appropriately and if goals are being achieved.
One 2014 report highlights the amazing sums of money spent yearly on employee training. While America’s executives have spent some $164 billion on training, they often reported that the results of said training were lackluster, and that they were dissatisfied with the returns on their investment. So, what common pitfalls should be avoided if you’re to make your employee training count?
Examining proven techniques before you get started is a surefire way to avoid mistakes frequently made by managers who plunge into training headfirst. Employers should understand that the point of employee training is to better their workers, for instance, but should also know that such a goal can’t be achieved if their managers and those doing the teaching in the first place are insufficiently equipped. For your business’ training regime to succeed, you’ll need to be ready to bring in the right people for the job, which could include temporary outside hires rather than training from within.
Building a 21st century workforce
Of course, no company’s training regime would be complete if it didn’t outfit its workers with the right skills and equipment to do their jobs, either. Leveraging tech and modern teaching styles to better meet your training demands, for instance, won’t only help cut cost in the long term, but will help familiarize your workers with the types of gadgets they’ll be working with for decades to come, too. Online programs like talentLMS allow your workers to learn from the comforts of their own homes on their own devices during their free time, and better meet the needs of modern employees who feel the need to be connected 24/7.
By embracing a digital approach to employee training, you can better connect your workers to one another, too. It’s long been recognized that mentor-mentee relationships are vital for successful workplace training, but only in today’s internet-driven world can your workers stay in touch at virtually any hour of the day, and communicate easily through their laptops and smartphones. Some countries choose to avoid this approach because it can lead to legal issues. For example, injuries at work can lead to compensation payments, but injuries outside a work area, during work time, can be a legal nightmare. Companies like LegalHelpline.co.uk exist to help sort these issues in the UK.
Employee retention is increasingly a problem for companies in the interconnected economy, meaning such interpersonal relationships that are enabled by tech are vital to keeping your employees engaged and happy in the workplace. Happy learners make for happy workers, and keeping the mental health and wellbeing of your employees at the top of your company’s priorities will help them achieve their learning and business goals alike.
It can be demanding to retrofit your entire training process overnight if your business has shunned tech thus far, but the importance of embracing modern methods of learning and communication to make your employee training count cannot be understated. It’s a new, digital economy out there, and that means your employees will need to be intimately familiar with the gadgets and software that pushes today’s market forward.
By making your training regime learner-centric, embracing modern tech, and planning out your goals ahead of time, you’ll find your workforce to be happier and more efficient than ever before in no time.
