The success of your business depends mostly on your workforce. If your employees are productive and content, you’re much more likely to progress and grow.
As you know, every journey begins with a single step, and your first step is high-quality employee training. If you do this part right, you’re much more likely to set your people on the right path and keep growing.
However, creating a training program can be challenging, especially if you’ve used other training methods so far. So here are some tips to help you create a program that will yield outstanding results.
Set Realistic and Precise Goals
You can’t make any program if you don’t have a clear idea of what results you need to see at the end. Knowing exactly what knowledge, technical skills, soft skills, and other competencies your employees need will allow you to create a training solution that will lead them to that goal.
If you only have a vague idea of what you want, you’ll end up with a sloppy, intuitively designed program that might confuse the trainees, discourage them, and, ultimately, lead them to give up.
A 2019 LinkedIn report shows that as many as 94% of employees would stay at a company much longer if the company invested in their learning and growth. It seems that employee retention depends heavily on this important factor, so you should get serious about it.
So, make sure your goals are realistic and measurable. If you’re training new employees, remember that getting to know the company culture should be part of the program.
Create the Learning Materials Carefully
So what should be on the curriculum? Think about the role you’re training your employees for and everything it entails. Make sure you cover every aspect as minutely as possible. Also, theory is great and necessary, but the training should involve a lot of examples and practice.
Next, think about the format in which you’ll be creating your program. How will you segment it? Information is better retained in chunks, so it’s best if you separate everything into several units. Moreover, when people run into a wall of text, they tend to switch off automatically. That’s why you should structure the information so that it’s easy to follow.
Lastly, think about the medium. Will you print it all out, upload it on a larger training platform, or send it via email or another app? Even if you do opt for paper, we advise you to also send electronic copies to your trainees.
Make the Program Flexible if Possible
Flexibility is more important than ever in the workplace. A survey has found that a quarter of the respondents would take up to a 20% pay cut in exchange for more flexibility. So why not give your employees a chance to complete the training on their terms?
This does not mean that mentors should sit at the office all day, waiting for employees to come in whenever they like. Rather, you could make your training program sort of self-service and possible to complete remotely. This option may not be the best one for newcomers, but it could work well for your existing employees.
You should make the materials available for any device and make them mobile-friendly so that the trainees can go through them even when they’re on the go.
Find Mentors Among Your Employees
Instead of doing it all yourself or hiring third-party coaches, you could tap into your existing workforce for mentors. Who can explain it better than someone who has experience doing it and can sneak in some tips and tricks of the trade?
There are so many benefits to this method. First, you won’t have to spend large amounts of money on hiring a third-party. Furthermore, you can rely on your trusted employee much more than on some outsider, no matter how professional they are.
Most importantly, your veteran employees will appreciate the fact that you trust and value them enough to rely on their mentorship abilities. They’ll also be grateful to you for introducing some variety into their daily office work, and they might even learn a lot in the process themselves.
Lastly, the trainees will have the opportunity to learn from seasoned professionals who can answer all their questions about the industry and about the company.
Pay Attention to Training Reports and Feedback
No matter what kind of program you design, you need to find ways to assess the success of your training endeavors and see how you can improve them. Reporting is of the utmost importance if you want to gain valuable insights, see which parts of the programs work, and which don’t.
Employing a training management platform for gaining meaningful business intelligence from your reports could be vital in helping you fine-tune your efforts. It will allow you to squeeze out more valuable insights from your numbers and stats.
Also, feedback from the employees themselves is invaluable, and there’s nothing that can help you identify the pain points in your training better than their feedback.
