- Help employees find their creative and innovative sides through training and learning
- Employee training is more than the content in the manual
- Is your training ready to make new employees successful?
- Are employees the only cause for poor work performance?
- It is possible to make the most knowledgeable workers good trainers, too
- Company culture is embedded in every customer interaction
- Good training lets learners know how and why their job matters
- Benefit from making the company way evident in your training
- Stickiness does not refer to the gum under your chair
- Use training certification programs to enhance employee retention and address change
As 2012 begins, leave it to Richard Branson to remind us what makes great companies great. In a recent blog post at Entrepreneuer.com, he says that people are the No. 1 asset to every company. He shares his 5 tips for business success:
- Find good people.
- Realize that the employees are the business.
- Always look for the best in your people. Lavish praise, never criticize.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously.
- Just do it.
Everything he says – and does – centers on people and the value they bring. Keeping them on board, motivated and invested is not an easy task.
One of the best ways to retain employees and make them feel valued is training. It is one of the top reasons employees give for staying in a position.
But there is another reason to train employees. It gives them new skills and information to do their jobs. It sparks innovation and creativity. It keeps them interested. Training gives them tools from which to stretch and grow – not only to their own personal benefit, but to the benefit of the company, too.
So, as you look for ways to grow your business and look for greater success, think about training. It doesn’t have to be a new system or software. It could be training on using software you have or on softer skills like organization, problem solving or inter-personal relationships.
Workplace training development doesn’t have to always center on solving a problem, streamlining a process or addressing a change. Training can center on refining skills and adding a new dimension to the workplace.
Take social media – is everyone geared up and using it? Does everyone understand the basics and how it works – or can work? Perhaps an eLearning module with the basics would alleviate some resistence and allow those who may seem reluctant to take the leap into Twitter or Google +1.
As Branson says, it is all about people. And whatever you provide for the people who work with and for you will come back – not to haunt you, but to support you and your business and help is thrive.
-Elaine of the 1st Class Solutions Blog Team
1st Class Solutions provides training solutions that stick!
“We have all the content ready for you.”
Lee Wood of 1st Class Solutions and I were talking the other day about taking training that was already in a classroom-based format or from a manual and turning it into eLearning training modules. She says clients usually understand the cost and learning benefits to eLearning, which is often one of the reasons for the conversion in the first place.
What they sometimes don’t understand is that for the instructional designer, the content of the course – the information in that binder – is just like clay to the sculptor. The instructional designer shapes it and molds it into a final form. And the challenge they face is shaping and molding the content into a form that is efficient and, most importantly, effective.
Of course the organization wants the worker to learn the new information and/or skills and be able to apply them in their work. To do that, the instructional designer has to engage the learners – hook them with relevance and context. Each organization and each set of learners is unique so understanding the environment, work and culture is important to the designer and will drive how the employee training is structured and completed.
In order to communicate the relevance and how the job fits into the greater picture of the organization, the designer has to have the overall picture. Each of the different jobs, processes, skills and information may best be delivered through different means:
- simulations,
- case studies,
- step-by-step graphics or
- discussions.
For example, the use of practice assignments and feedback can be more productive with problem solving situations than a simple multi-answer assessment. In Ruth Colvin Clark’s book, Evidence-Based Training Methods, she explains how learners learn and the architectures that are best used for specific sorts of learning. There is no one-size-fits-all instructional strategy to educate or train people – young or old. Lee says that instructional designers take the learners, the content and the desired result into consideration in order to determine the most effective methods – and that takes time.
Let experienced instructional designers help you in workplace training development. They can help convert your employee training to eLearning or a blended learning solution - it could be the most cost-effective and best result you can get!
-Elaine of the 1st Class Solutions Blog Team
ABC News recently came out with a report of nine big companies that are hiring - from Home Depot to Boeing to Chobani. That news, along with the recent decline in unemployment to 8.5% (the lowest number since 2009), shows that 2012 is looking to be a year of new employees in many organizations.
According to an article in Forbes, Mark Murphy says that 89% of new hires fail, not because of technical skills but because of attitude. I wonder why?
If your organization is hiring new workers, are you ready? How many of those new hires are going to successfully assimilate into the organization and bring new life and productivity? What can you do to improve the odds?
- Have a checklist that includes everything from the tools and space for the new hire to the trainers and training they will meet and get.
- Provide an employee handbookthat outlines the rules and philosophy of the organization.
- Have a training process in place that systematically imparts the information and people a new employee will need to know to ”get down to work.”
Why is this important?
Consider my niece’s experience at a new job. She is technically skilled and knows the nuts and bolts of her work in the IT field. What she didn’t know starting a new job was the organization itself – its culture, the processes, the flow. What she didn’t get was much attention for the first couple of weeks – and then she was thrown in the water. Sink or swim. She swam, but not without much distress and she even considered leaving the job.
The first couple of days was just figuring out where the bathroom and lunchroom were, filling out the necessary HR paperwork and trying to figure out who was in which department and maybe a little of what her job duties would be. She was assigned to a supervisor who was too busy and away at meetings most of the time. She sat – alone – a lot.
If that’s what’s happening in your place of business, how successful do you think that bright new employee will feel – or be? We can help because we have 1st Class Solutions to help you solve that problem!
-Elaine of the 1st Class Solutions Blog Team
Training solutions that stick!
When performance is a problem, the first place employers look is at the employee. The employee is not always the only problem, but eliminating that possibility is not a bad idea. There are three potential issues with employees:
- The employee can’t do the job. The employee simply is not capable and does not possess the aptitude to do the work requested.
- The employee doesn’t know how to do the job. The employee does not possess the skills and knowledge to adequately perform to expectations.
- The employee doesn’t want to do the job. The desire to do the job at the level needed is absent.
What you may need is a training solution. However, putting the responsibility on the shoulders of the employee is not always the answer. When considering poor or inadequate performance, many other aspects of the work environment and the work itself should be considered.
Workers are but one aspect of work completion in an organization. When there is a breakdown, the employee may appear to be the center of the issue, when in fact there could be other, equally as instrumental issues. Communication or lack thereof, the absence of clear and distinct expectations and requirements as well as outdated or inadequate processes could also contribute.
Analyzing systems to determine where the solution can be found is requires an experienced hand and process. Based in Indianapolis, 1st Class Solutions provides performance consulting that can not only help identify the cause of performance breakdown, but also help establish the steps needed to improve the situation.
Taking steps to improve output and performance is one way to positively impact the growth of an organization. Is it one you should be looking at today?
-Elaine of the 1st Class Solutions Blog Team
I was just reading about Beth Allen at Entrepreneuer who has launched a new handywoman business. Not only is she a woman answering the call, her clients are women. However, what is really making Allen’s new venture different is the teaching aspect of her work.
On her calls, Allen is not only repairing that leaky faucet, she is instructing the female client on how to do the repair next time on their own. Not only that, she is offering seminars and DIY workshops aimed at women (but men are welcome, too) who want to take matters into their own hands.
Karen Zwick and I were just talking the other day here at 1st Class Solutions about what it takes to facilitate training classes. Facilitation is another name for classroom instruction. Allen is apparently good at instruction, but that is not necessarily the case for all subject matter experts.
Not all people who have the technical and specialized skills for a job can guide or train others. Likewise, those who are good at teaching others are not necessarily experts in a given field. This is especially true in workplace training. The structure of the training, the way material is chunked and presented, the practice activities and assessment should all be designed specifically to the training and the learners – especially adult learners.
Melding the subject matter expert and the instructor is possible and likely - with the help of professional instructional design firms like 1st Class Solutions. Instructional designers can take the training material, prepare a course and then train the trainer in how to present it.
It’s more than tips for the classroom. It’s based on educational research on how to structure and cover material to provide the greatest opportunity for understanding and retention. In other words, how to make training most effective so the worker can return to their workspace and immediately implement the new learning.
Usually training is accompanied by a job aid of some sort. It could be a “cheat-sheet” giving the steps in a task or a pneumonic that provides a quick reminder. It could also be a written manual that becomes a valuable resource at the work station.
Good training facilitation doesn’t just happen. Just like you would plan a strategy or process in your organization if you want it to be successful, trainers and training needs to be handled the same way.
-Elaine of the 1st Class Solutions Blog Team