4 Mistakes Really Successful Companies Avoid During Employee Training

Every company offers some type of employee training. For new employees of course, training is needed to onboard them to workplace software, or to introduce them to overall strategy. Many times, training is provided to existing employees when something new is introduced to the company or when employees need to brush up on something such as policies and procedures. At some point in time, companies may make the mistake of not properly offering the right type of training to employees. This can cause employees to feel like they are wasting their time and not learning anything. “What’s in it for me?” they ask. It is important that companies offer training that is relevant to the specific tasks and responsibilities that employees have. Specificity, relevance, and proper delivery are all key to effective employees training.. Below are the 4 most common mistakes that successful companies avoid when it comes to their employees training.  1. Overwhelming Employees during Initial Training Sessions Companies who fail at offering successful training sessions often overwhelm their employees with information that is either not relevant or does not apply to the company. It is important for managers and companies to remember that people have a limited attention span. This means that the training session must be designed with this in mind. Flooding your employees with a ton of new information is useless because your employees will not be able to retain everything that is being thrown at them. You will be more successful during training sessions if you focus on one or two principles or new concepts per each training session. Offer shorter sessions over a period of a week or two instead of one lengthy session in one day. Additionally, while we are the topic, let’s not look at training anymore as a one-time event, ok? It’s a continuous process that employees will return to as they continue to work, long after the initial training sessions have past. This is even more of a reason to be careful not to overwhelm them with too much information at one time.  2. Failure to Properly Motivate Employees to Perform and Succeed All employees need some type of motivation to perform and succeed at their job and in training sessions. Without motivation, employees have no real incentive to learn. There are some employees who want to learn but these employees only make up a handful of your actual staff. Your other employees will need some encouragement. You can motivate your employees by offering rewards for reaching milestones and achieving the goals of the company. These rewards will help motivate your employees as they work towards earning something for themselves.  Or sometimes it’s just a little positive feedback, which, trust me, is received and valued. 3. The Training Isn’t Relevant to Actual Tasks and Responsibilities The training that you are providing your employees with must be relevant to their actual job. If the training is not relevant, what motivation do they have to learn it? When you begin introducing new things to your employees, you want to make sure that your employees can actually use this information. Teaching information that has nothing to do with the job is pointless and will just lead the training session off topic. Your employees want to learn something that they can put to use. They do not want to listen to useless lectures about how to do X when their job involves doing Y. Make sure that the training you are offering is applicable to the employees who are in the room learning.  4. Not Following Up Following up is not just for telephone sales! It is important to make sure you are constantly following up with your employees after a training session. You will be able to address any questions that your employees might have that went unanswered or you can help them understand a principle that they did not quite grasp. Many companies make the mistake of assuming that their employees understood the training and they grasped all of the concepts. As an employer, you should offer some type of performance support to your employees after the training so that they can receive help when they need it. Continuous learning is also very effective because it encourages your employees to keep learning and it refreshes their memory. Programs such as WalkMe can help you with performance support and continuous learning. The employee training tracking software is easy to use and will provide employees with direct and specific assistance, in the moment that the employee needs it.. Successful companies always make sure that their employees are learning something useful from the employee trainings and have procedures in place to help keep employees learning. Avoid making the above mistakes in your company trainings. More relevant information about training is available on employee training plan template page.