6 Tools to Amp Up Your New Employee Training

Maintaining employees’ skills and improving their performance are critical for companies looking to achieve maximum success and retain a competitive advantage. You know your employee training program directly impacts your company’s ability to increase productivity, cut costs, and streamline operations. And you know there’s tremendous value in having at least a basic training program to educate your employees about all of your policies, procedures, rules, and regulations. But have you ever wondered if the employee training program you have in place could be better? Here are six easy ways to amp up your employee training program that will make your employees, and your entire company, look even better.

1. Set goals and write plans.

One of the simplest things you can do to ensure your new employee training program is effective is to establish goals for the training ahead of time. Once you have goals in mind, make sure they are clearly communicated to your employees throughout the training process so they know exactly what they are supposed to get out of the training.

Along the same lines, once you have established your training goals, make a plan for how you will go about achieving those goals. Start by asking yourself what methods you should use and how to best connect with your new employees. Then write an outline to help you stay on track.

2. Make the training interactive.

Although the material in your employee training program is important, there’s a good chance at least some of it is a little on the boring side. This is a common problem and one that can be solved by breaking it up into smaller chunks and making it more engaging and interactive. Tip: Maybe one of the goals we just talked about should be keeping your employees engaged and focused during training.

If your training is conducted in person, keep the mood conversational. Talk with the learners, not at them—if you encourage a back-and-forth exchange of information, you’re far more likely to keep everyone involved. Hands-on exercises and role-playing are other ways to break up the monotony of a lecture-style training session. Whether you offer training in person or online, games, interactive exercises, and quizzes will also keep employees actively involved with the training material.

3. Make your training available online and on mobile devices.

Moving your employee training program into the digital world is a great way to not only expedite the training process, but also to make it more convenient and accessible to employees. Doing so will allow your employees to access the training at the time that best works for them, rather than forcing them to rearrange their schedules to accommodate a training session.

There are a couple of different ways to begin this process of turning your existing content into online training: You can find a company that specializes in the creation of online training (us, for example) or you can find an online learning platform that allows you to create courses from templates. If you decide to take your training online, break up the material into chapters or modules for easy navigation and progress tracking.

4. Turn the tables.

One of the best ways to gauge how well things are going during your training is to turn the tables on your new employees. At certain intervals throughout the training, ask your trainees to repeat the material back to you or deliver it to you as though you were the one in training. Ask your employees to explain the concepts and principals to you in their own words to ensure they’ve retained the important parts. This process will help you identify unclear topics and questions they have about the materials you’ve presented.

5. Allow enough time.

Depending on how difficult or intricate your employees’ job responsibilities are, there could be a tremendous amount of material to cover during your employee training program. Make sure you’re allowing enough time to properly cover each topic and to ensure your employees understand the material before moving on to the next subject. Breezing over all the material as quickly as you can is likely to produce nothing but disappointing results. The more important and in-depth a topic is, the more time you’ll need to thoroughly explain and teach it.

6. Keep your messaging consistent.

One of the most common traps trainers fall into is explaining a clearly defined process and then turning around and saying, “But I do it this way….” While you may think you’re adding value to the training by explaining your way of doing things, it’s more likely that you’re just confusing your employees by giving them mixed messages. Instead, stick to consistently teaching them to do things the “correct” or “by the book” so they understand exactly what is expected of them.

Training your employees is one of the best ways to ensure you have the best workforce possible. Even if your current training and development program is good, these suggestions can help you make it great.