Effectively Training New Employees in a Mobile Phone World

Spending time and money to properly train new employees is one of the wisest and most valuable investments you can make as a human resources director. When done right, new employee training helps cut down on costly mistakes, improves teamwork and communication, and streamlines operations to optimize profits. However, not all employee training programs are created equally, and not all of them are designed for success. In order to ensure that your employee training program is effective, you need to keep it updated, engaging, and modern. This can be accomplished, in part, by creating a training program that is accessible on mobile phones and tablets.

Moving your training program to a mobile platform will not only optimize your success rate with new employees, it will go a long way toward getting them up to speed faster. Long-term benefits aside, the process of moving your training to a mobile phone and tablet platform is one that needs to be handled with care and planning. Here are three important components to effectively training new employees in a mobile phone world.

Find the right LMS to manage your program

If you are going to make the wise move to implement a mobile employee training program, you need to also make a careful decision when selecting a learning management system (LMS). For starters, make sure your learning management system will be reliable and optimally functional for your training program. This will be easier if you have a strong outline and design in mind before reviewing the various LMS options. Compare your needs to what’s offered so you can measure for a sensible fit. Do your research in advance so you’re armed with questions to ask about problems and concerns that are common for that particular learning management system. Before making a final decision, make sure you’re comfortable with the way the LMS will work—and don’t forget to train your HR team in advance so they’re able to field questions from employees as they navigate the LMS.

Provide technical support

Just like any web-based technology, online and digital orientation programs are susceptible to glitches. Therefore, if you are going to invest in developing a successful mobile training program, you also need to invest in and implement a successful organized support service. As employees encounter questions or problems with the mobile platform, they’ll need easy access to answers and support so they don’t become discouraged and frustrated. One of the major benefits of mobile training is convenience—don’t nullify that by failing to offer the necessary technical support for your employees.

Make sure new employees can access training offline

Online training portals are great—and they’re highly successful in cases where everyone can access them. But even in 2017, it’s not guaranteed that everyone has access to the internet, a computer, or a smartphone, so the absolute best way to optimize the performance of your mobile employee training program is to make it available offline as well. This way, your employees can continue their training even when they don’t have access to the internet.

The world we live in is fast-paced, and mobile and the workforce is adapting by demanding information on the go. Mobile learning offers exactly what they want—on-demand training that provides immediate feedback and results.