The 4 Most Important Keys To An Employee Training Program

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Onboarding new hires is one of the most important aspects of running a tight team. And the biggest part of that is employee training. The smoother the transition for a new hire to get up to speed the better it is for them and the company. It costs a lot of money to go through the hiring process so it makes sense to make sure everybody is on the same page from the get-go.

This means that it is essential to have a good program that is consistent and designed in such a way to get the best results. And those results will reveal themselves in a more robust bottom line. When people are well trained they are happier because there is less frustration with work. And happier employees are more productive.

In this article, we will go over several tips that can help train employees and help the company in the process.

1 – Tailor the training

Everybody learns differently and responds to information in their own way. That means that having a one size fits all system is not going to work well. The training should incorporate a lot of different mediums and techniques to get the point across.

Most people don’t do well with rote memorization from a book, for instance. The information is stale and it doesn’t help the trainee to learn only to recite. The best way for people to learn is to have different lessons done in different ways.

Video is a good example of this as it can be very engaging for the trainee. Seeing how something is supposed to be done is usually better than reading about it. Hire a company like Miami-based video production agency Zipinmedia to produce a training video of the most important aspects of the job. Having it be professionally made and edited will give it some polish that will help the trainee learn in their own way.

Some parts of the job need to use classroom lessons to get the point across. In addition, there is a teacher that can help dive deep into areas when the trainees are having difficulty absorbing a concept.

2 – Use employees as trainers

It is impossible for a trainer to know the minute details of every position in the company. This is why it makes the most sense for the employees themselves to lead the training of new hires. They know the intimate details about the job and how to make sure it gets done correctly.

It’s just like in a trade. The veteran workers pass on their skills and accumulated knowledge to those new hires and on and on it goes.

3 – Set milestones

The only way to know if a training system is working is to set goals and see if they are reached or not. There are things that can be worked out to show that the training is working. For instance, there could be a milestone set that requires an employee to debug some lines of code within two weeks of getting a particular training. If the majority of the people are not able to do so, it means that the system is not working as intended. If it is only a handful of people unable to do it then it is the individual that is not getting it.

These milestones can be for the whole company or per department, whichever area the training is directed. Performance reviews done periodically will also paint a picture of how the training has been going. Once again, if poor performance is happening across the board with new hires then the issue isn’t the hiring process, it is poor training.

If all the goals are being met then new ones can be set. There should always be some kind of process to make sure that training is doing its job.

4 – Create a culture of learning

Training shouldn’t be a one-and-done type of system. There should be a culture within the company to always be learning. Employees should be encouraged to learn new aspects of the job all the time. In fact, they should even have some points in their career in which they learn about the work other departments are doing.

This type of learning helps keep communications working since employees understand how the entire force works together. In addition to that, there should be periodical training periods to refresh what was learned in the beginning. Not only that but there could be new aspects to the work or changes in policy that need to be updated in a training session.