This article was originally published on e-Learning Industry.
Training is a critical tool in building employee knowledge and a great way to retain and empower your team. While it takes many forms, and exists in a variety of venues, training is essential in order to foster your business’s vision, and maintain a competitive edge in your field. Much emphasis is placed on the good. What about the bad?
Τhe Worst Employee Training Experience Ever
We have all experienced the monotone classroom environment with knowledge that isn’t easily implemented, or immediately valuable. How many times have we participated in a great training session and then immediately forgotten at least 50% or more of the newly acquired information? Too often.
So, in order to help you build a great training environment, we are going to go in that direction. Here are 4 ways to create the worst employee training opportunities ever.
1.Forget to Train Your Leadership
Your leadership sits above the rest of the company. Why should they be required to continually train, and train on pertinent systems and technology alongside lower level employees? Leadership should lead and make relevant business decisions. Becoming training advocates and learning alongside employees might humanize them. This will give employees more respect for their leadership, but respect is unnecessary when you can simply lead with fear. Demanding training from middle managers and employees while sitting above in a glass tower will let the company know who is in charge.
Remaining disengaged from the training that they are requiring of their employees, while not updating their skills regularly is the executive prerogative. Training is far less likely to be successfully implemented when you lead with fear and showcase your refusal to build new skills while making training opportunities mandatory for all. Gartner Analysts believe in the right way to do business: “Find out what each manager needs to improve based on crowdsourced input from direct reports, provide training to the managers so they can make some improvements, then have the managers report back to their direct reports what they learned and what addition changes they will work on making.”
2.Provide Ambiguous Training Opportunities
Training needs to align with your corporate vision and strategy. Be ambiguous about what that is and how your employees fall in line with it in order to shift the responsibility downward. Concepts without a clear link to daily tasks and a grand vision for the business are far less likely to be successful. With insufficient role playing, case studies or quickly applicable job related information, training will fail. Trainees must not see the connection between their day-to-day activities and not be allowed to make errors and see quick fixes. This will make training ambiguous and irrelevant to the work experience.
3.Do Not Plan an Adequate Training Budget
If you have not allocated an appropriate budget, your training initiatives are never going to meet the needs of your employees. Your budget should be minimized in order to save money which in the long run cannot hurt your business in any way. Make sure to cut training resources, time, and materials. Oftentimes the way to really minimize training costs is to think of them as a one-time cost.
4.Do Not Provide Continuous Learning
One of the most significant ways to save money over an extended period of time is to not invest in appropriate follow-up employee training or learning initiatives. There are a variety of technical products and support systems which can be immediately implemented so that your employees do not miss a beat with their training, but they all cost money.
From onscreen walkthroughs, to software tutorials, you have a variety of options available to maintain your employees’ training success and ensure that information is not lost. Unless you would rather save in the long run this means that your training initiatives should be looked at as a one-time expense.
Forrester Analysts also differ with our advice: “Develop supplemental training materials to provide ongoing advice, such as blogs with tips and tricks for each application that also encourage employee experts to share their own insights. Create YouTube-style videos to supplement training and explain common problems faced by most employees (remember people have different learning styles and it’s important to offer training in all formats).”
Training is directly related to safer and more pleasant workplaces. This leads to better employee engagement and business success. The investment is worth it so do not fall short of your employees’ expectations. Make your training budget significant (advocate hard for this if you need). Provide continuous learning opportunities, make your training immediately relevant and lead by example. The examples above are satirical to be sure but by embracing how crazy they might seem you will be well on your way to success.
