5 Steps to Implement an Effective Employee Training Program
Companies, especially giant organizations, pay great attention to employee training programs. This is not a surprising fact as they focus on quality and want to be known in the market with specialized employees who are masters in their responsibilities and provide satisfaction among the market users.
Taking into account the importance of training employees as well as the focus of companies on it, I decided to make detailed research, analyze the market and present a step by step guide on how to implement this training process maximum effectively and experience productivity.
The Importance of Employee Training Programs
Training workers is critical in several ways. First of all, it’s the point to improve the staff engagement and increases retention among the team members. If implemented in the right way, these pieces of training have a positive impact also on work efficiency, innovation, and productivity.
At first, training is good for your staff and, secondly, the profitability and clients. Employee training cannot just happen and be good. It should be effective, modern, and fit for a specific purpose. In a simpler language, it should be personalized to the company and the staff members.
It has never been so principal to take a deep dive into your employee training strategy before. As the current world looks to a future that is to become even more digital, human resources and learning leaders in every angle of the world think about reorganizing their workplace learning. Perhaps you are also one of them or you are just looking to improve your training strategy. Maybe, you are used to face-to-face training and now, along with the technological innovation and digitalization, you tend to set up an innovative online training program from scratch.
If you are one of the above-mentioned types, then you are at the right place, go on reading. In this article, I’m going to show you the key points you need to consider to ensure your employee training initiative is a success.
Step #1 Capture Your Company Needs and Establish Goals
Have you ever asked yourself why does your employee training matter? I’m sure, in your mind, you have the problem they are meant to solve. First of all, you should highlight this weak point, understand what it really looks like, and set goals that help you remove the drawbacks and achieve success.
Capturing your real needs will be a supporting point to clearly identify the prompt of success for your training initiative. Accordingly, you will get a chance to easily prioritize the objectives that need to be completed faster and sooner, and that will have an immediate influence on your company.
To make this work, you will need to ask questions or create polls and discussions. Capture your challenges as well as the audience requirements, shape a general user profile before you shape and test the final solution.
Step #2 Choose the Right Software Platform for Your Pieces of Training
As you have already decided on going digital and effectively organize the staff training online, you should think about having the best platform tailored to your business needs and requirements. Of course, it would be great to have a custom website that covers all the features you need, but it will also cost a significant amount of money that you cannot afford for now. Or, probably, you don’t want to spend that much of your budget on having a personal training platform when there are so many alternatives.
I’m sure, you have tried to manage the process through Zoom, Skype, or any other online meeting providers. They are good, but you may find a better option to organize the training effectively.
Today there are many website builders that are also good solutions. One of them is Uteach. Here you can organize any form of training you like. The platform covers a lot of e-teaching features that will be the best fit for your needs.
The platform offers advanced features and functionality, including
- Live Classes: you may organize a call and manage your training.
- Automated Classes: if your training consists of several parts, and lasts, for instance, a few months, you may create the classes and organize a timetable in advance. The classes will be according to the initial scheduling and there will be no need to create classes every time.
- Online Video Courses: the training that takes place every year or for every new staff member may be recorded and presented in the form of online video courses. Accordingly, a lot of time and energy will be saved.
- Blog: if you have some material that may be presented in the form of texts, images, or videos, you may publish blog articles and present the educational material in this way. Blogs are also a means of making money when generating a significant amount of traffic.
- Quizzes and Tests: employees who take part in a specific training should pass a test to prove their acquired knowledge, skills, and proficiency. With Uteach, you may create quizzes and set the right answers in advance so that the system automatically checks the tests and provide marks.
- Certification: the team members who successfully pass the test with good results, will get an automatically generated certificate.
Uteach offers other features as well, such as:
- Custom Domain
- Free Hosting
- Unlimited Opportunities (learners, courses, storage, etc.)
- Mobile-Friendly Design
- Language Choice
- Any Other Feature You Like (in Custom Plan)
Do you see? Creating a personal website with Uteach will be affordable while your platform will not be less functional than custom sites. This is absolutely risk-free. You may take your free trial and start today or schedule a free demo and get familiar with the whole functionality of the website before starting.
Step #3 Offer Useful, Personalized, and Engaging Employee Learning Experiences
The level of people’s engagement is the key point to determine how successful your pieces of training are going to be. To make it work, you should pay great attention to meeting the requirements effectively. The staff should have trust in this training, otherwise, they will not consider it useful and it will become difficult to engage them in and make them take part in it.
In order to manage the process productively, many companies focus on people-centered learning. This will also be one of the tendencies of education in the future. In people-centered e-learning, they focus on the fact that the number one reason people join organizations is learning. It covers gaining skills, improving their capabilities, and having experience. So, the best way to meet this need is to offer a personalized way of education where the learner is at the center.
According to some research analysis, that is based on a detailed study of industry learners’ behavior and determination of projects in the niche, there are 6 key points that are considered by some successful learning staffs to dramatically change the way of digital learning and get the best of productivity. These 6 points are:
1. Deliver ROI: Return on Investment is the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that is used by companies to determine the profitability of an expenditure.
2. Meet clear goals: As we have already discussed on the first step, the goals help to focus on needs and think about possible solutions.
3. Measure your learning: This may be done by percentages. The training and the tests should be organized in a way that the results be measurable and the learners who successfully pass the test even with the lowest positive mark have a good understanding of the scope.
4. Be personal: This is the most essential point in people-centered learning. Focus on the target audience’s needs, create goals according to these personalized demands, and offer custom solutions.
5. Respect time: Time is money. Respect both your and the learners’ time. Be specific, focus on the most essential points and never beat about the bushes, coming up with unnecessary information.
6. Make it widely available: Accessibility of the educational material is a very critical factor especially for company chains that spread in different cities and countries all over the world. Digital learning solves this problem. You may create training in form of video courses and give access to the employees, or you organize an online meeting and invite everyone you want no matter their geographical location.
Step #4 Choose the Right Time to Deliver Training to Staff
An essential factor in providing productivity with your staff training is the time it is delivered. This will also be decided, taking into consideration the preferences of the learners. Therefore, the business objectives should never be left on the second plan.
There are cases when the training is required according to the business model and the employees do not have any other chance but to take part in it. Such cases may be:
- training for every new employee
- annual training
- training before a product launch
- required pieces of demanded training
When the training does not have a dramatically high priority it is recommended to provide the material and give some time for the employees to pass it. Of course, this may refer to the material in textual or video course format. When dealing with the online live meetings, the company is to decide the dates and time, if possible, considering the appropriate times for the staff as well.
You are the decision-maker on whether you choose the time on your own or leave it to the audience’s preferences. The correct answer may be any of them, and why not a combination, of both models. The critical point to highlight is that the training and access method should be comfortable for the audience. Some companies even try several ways of training deliveries or interview employees and choose a model or several of them that work best in the chosen environment.
Step #5 Track, Analyze, and Improve
People differ and time changes. Educational programs are not fixed and the results you get from the first training are not meant to be the same for the second time. That is why you need to track the process and shape an opinion about the user behavior. Different people experience a unique approach towards your training and it should be so flexible to be easy to understand for any kind of learner.
Following the user approach to your training helps you identify the weak points and drawbacks. Accordingly, you fix them and improve the quality, providing a higher level of efficiency.
In order to evaluate the process, take into consideration the following activities:
- Review the results of the online quiz and find out if there are particular questions that consistently get wrong answers. If they are, then in a higher chance, the questions are at fault, or probably the content is incomplete.
- Assess the level of customer satisfaction to identify whether or not the training gets the desired effects.
- Always follow the important numbers such as the number of users, most visited times of the day, used devices, the length of the spent time, whether or not the same person returns to the training, and whatever else you think matters.
- Review all the requests on the support and identify at which points the training should be created or improved.
- Directly ask workers and managers about the pain points while they experience and what suggestions they have to help them improve.
A significant part of the tracking process may be done through analytical tools such as Google Analytics. If you create a platform with Uteach you may easily integrate this free tool to your training website and follow the traffic flow through training pages, quizzes, certification process, and so on.
Having so many opportunities in this digital world, you should never miss your chance to provide productivity and efficiency even a minute sooner. The right management and organization of your staff training increase the quality of your employees. And accordingly, your business growth increases, making your brand — well known, your services and products worthy, and your company — successful and trustworthy.
