How to Improve Training Programs for Employees
Training is fundamental for every company to improve employees' understanding and skills and promote their development. Investing in your employees means investing in your company for the long term. That's why proper training can lead to success, whether it's ongoing training for existing employees or new programs for new team members.
Why is employee training so important?
New employees need to feel supported and confident in their new position, and training helps achieve this. With a training program, you show your employees that you care about their training and development and that you want them to feel confident in their role.
For certain tasks, such as For example, working in a warehouse, training is essential for health and safety and proper operations.
Additionally, training gives employees the feeling that they are valued and that the company is not neglecting their ongoing development.
How to Improve Your Training Programs
Think About a Variety of Learning Options
Individuals learn in different ways, at different speeds. Some may be visual learners, while others may do better with having everything written down. Providing more than one learning option can help employees learn in their best way and access what they need. This could be creating an interactive video program, alongside a full written document, the opportunity to go to presentations in person, a question-and-answer meeting, or learning on the job through on-site training.
Make Programs Accessible
If you have video media as part of your training programs, such as employees learning from home by watching a presentation or sending video training to business employees located around the world, taking everyone’s needs into account is crucial.
If you have employees abroad who speak another language, using a translation service can be a great help, especially for very technical and detailed training information. Additionally, you should also consider transcribing video content to ensure no information is lost and employees who may be hard of hearing have convenient access.
Ask your employees
After all, employees are the ones who should learn. Therefore, it is a good idea to ask them how they would like to be trained, whether they have any suggestions and whether they can provide feedback. This can help you create a training program completely tailored to your team's feedback.
You can also do this with feedback in the middle of the training, as it is always possible that certain training methods will not work smoothly in practice. You can always adjust the program if employees don't accept it or if they would learn better in a different way.
Make the program flexible
Attempting to run a training program on your terms around employees' full-time working hours may result in a lack of motivation or result in employees being found at their least productive time of day, such as: E.g. if you try to complete the training after the end of the work day.
The more flexible you are, the more positively employees will respond to the training and the more productive they will be when the can more easily fit the training into their schedule. This could mean offering your employees the opportunity to attend the program remotely on their own time, allowing flexible deadlines for completing the program, or allowing paid time to be used to conduct training instead to try to reconcile this with the existing work.
This depends on your employees and your industry, but the more flexible you can be, the more receptive your employees will be. In that case we at IceHrm can assist your company to manage the training sessions.