5 Resolutions for Training Staff in 2015

I know, Christmas isn’t even here yet and we are looking at New Year’s resolutions! Shame on us I agree, but what can make you feel smugger while taking the holiday break than having your 2015 resolutions all stacked up and ready to go. You may not have your partner’s present bought yet but here is your foolproof cheatsheet for bossing January in the office.

The Cost of Not Training

Your staff are your greatest resource and asset so it makes sense to try to ensure that they are fully equipped to deal with the challenges that they will face in their working day. Committing time and money to training your human capital is going to be the best money you will spend in 2015. Research by Deloitte states that corporate spend on training has risen by 25% since 2009 which shows that companies are beginning to realize that the costs associated with unproductive employees and high staff turnover can be significantly reduced with better training of existing team members. In fact, 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their jobs within the first year according to Go2HR.

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Training Methods

Figure out what training methods will work for you. A really simple way to figure out the type of training that might work for your organisation is to do a training matrix. Draw an L shaped diagram and label the upright section Ease of Application and the label the bottom section Effectiveness.

Now place all the possible training possibilities for your company on this matrix using those two rating scales. This should give you a clearer idea of what may work for you. Examples of common training methods are:

• Face-to-face training
• Video
• Seminars
• Mentoring or Buddying
• Online training
• Folders, eg, Drive, Dropbox
• Company manual

Make a training plan

This training plan must be recognized as being a plan that can change over time to respond to changing conditions and to feedback from the end users. That said, it should be a structured document with certain key sections in order to have any chance of succeeding. Any training plan requires firstly, an introduction setting the scene for the trainee, explaining why the training is taking place and what it hopes to achieve. Following naturally from this introduction is the goals that you are setting for the trainees. Here you can outline the overall vision of how they will add value to the company mission, what their specific KPI’s are and who they will be working in conjunction with in order to achieve these. This is the most important section of the plan and demands significant research and review of existing workflows and KPI’s in order to be coherent and implementable. Lastly, your training plan must outline the actions that are required to achieve the goals. Here you will need to workshop situations and activities to get trainees into the mind-set of how to achieve goals. Simulations of real-world work processes are a proven way of getting trainees with experience to gain that experience. Your training plan, as I have stated, is a working document and will need to be tailored to different roles or locations. Many of our customers find that building a core template plan which can be adapted to different situations is the best way to achieve efficiency in their training.

Use your company history

Your company is training people for success and trying to build on all the lessons you have learned over the years so try to use that to your advantage in your training. If you can use specific examples from your company for trainees rather than lists of protocol it will make the process far more relatable and easy to implement.

Why not try to take, say, a customer service exchange from the past that worked particularly well or, perhaps, particularly badly. Using real-world examples will give a very clear guide for trainees as to how the company expects them to act.

There is also the opportunity to workshop the scenario with the trainees to find out how the situation could have been better handled and in this way, you are not only training your staff but you are also brainstorming a whole new customer service model for your company!

Online training

The HR and Training departments of your company are the ones that have probably undergone the greatest amount of change in recent years with a plethora of HR technologies coming into the market. Using online training to onboard new hires quickly and efficiently is helping trainers and HR professionals to streamline their efforts and have staff arrive fully briefed and prepared for their work.

Online training cannot make up for deficiencies in planning or training materials but it can help to avoid unnecessary time delays in delivery. It is also a great way of keeping track of training modules that have been delivered so that trainers can report back to senior managers.

If you would like to learn more about how to leverage online training methods to train your staff contact us here.

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