A lot of thought goes into training employees so that you can run your business efficiently.
To see how proper training is delivered and how it can boost employee performance, we turned to the real expert, Nicole Russell, CEO, and founder of Cellbotics. She shared her experience of training employees and how her training programs have helped hundreds of people.
Drawing from her experience, we have put together six practical ways to enable any business to form a winning employee team in no time.
1. Hiring key team members
Training employees is not only limited to implementing programs or using training tools. It is highly dependent on choosing a program that best suits the trainees.
Make sure to set specific standards for the kind of employees that you wish to onboard. You need to keep in view the personality traits required for each position.
For example, for a cellphone repair shop technician, the employee should know how to fix cellphones and be willing to learn how to operate the repair shop software.
Starting with hiring the right employee is crucial when drafting your training strategy. After all, everyone is not born with the skill to learn or follow the company’s guidelines.
2. Focusing on team building
To create a winning team’s synergy, your employees need to get to know each other. They will be spending more time together than with their own families.
Working alongside another person is different as compared to working together as a team. Team building can positively affect various areas of your workplace, such as problem-solving, setting goals, etc.
Instead of concentrating on personal and individual goals, practical team-building skills can tie employees around a unified plan and increase productivity. Your employees can be working across various departments in different job positions. Nonetheless, teamwork means they will be working towards the same organizational objective.
So before you dive into your employee training programs, begin with team-building sessions. Be creative with these activities to engage your employees. Don’t turn it into a competition.
3. Finding out how your employees prefer to learn
Every employee has a different way of learning. Some prefer instructor-led training sessions, whereas others favor hands-on training.
It’s reasonable to say that catering to your employees’ various learning needs is crucial to your training sessions’ success rate.
You must be thinking about how you can achieve that. Try out Kolb’s four learning styles to distinguish how your employees prefer to learn.
The four learning styles are:
- Diverging (feeling and watching)
Some employees might prefer to watch rather than do. They collect information and solve problems through their imagination. They like to work in groups, are good at brainstorming, and listen with an open mind.
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Assimilating (watching and thinking)
This learning style focuses on concepts and ideas over people. Such employees are excellent at understanding comprehensive information and assembling it logically and clearly.
Employees with this learning style will prefer lectures, readings, and exploring analytical models. It will enable them to think things through.
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Converging (doing and thinking)
Some employees are good at problem-solving. They use their learned information to find solutions to practical problems. They favor technical tasks more than solving social issues.
Such employees like to experiment with fresh ideas and work practices.
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Accommodating (Doing and Feeling)
The doing and feeling style is hands-on. An employee who favors this style relies more on intuition than logic. Such employees like to be challenged and enjoy carrying out plans.
They depend on others for information instead of drafting their analysis. They believe in the motto’ Teamwork makes the dream work’.
You can identify your employees’ learning styles easily with the help of Kolbs’ strategy. Once identified then you can devise an effective training program.
4. Giving Extensive Product Training
All employees need to learn about your business and how it helps customers. It’s not just about clarity on the objective of your business. It’s about getting engagement with the customers.
If your employees know your business’s objective, they will automatically know its qualities, values, and importance. It is achievable through extensive product training.
Product training is not limited to educating your employees about the product and its use in the best possible way. It also includes:
- Training in the industry
- The position of your product in the market
- How it provides valuable solutions as compared to the competitors
In addition to this, if you are a repair shop owner and are using repair shop software, your product training session should also have a particular segment for software training.
It might seem too much information to feed into your employees. The more extensive the training program, the more value it will add to your business.
5. Following up on the training sessions
You might assume that once your training program is complete, you can relax. That’s not the case. The development of your team does not stop even after finishing training. Continuity is the key.
Make sure your employees continue to learn. Try giving them extra responsibility after their training is complete. By emphasizing continuous learning, you tell your employees that their development is a priority to your company.
By following up on training with new assignments, additional training, or regular meet-ups, you avoid burying newly learned information under day-to-day tasks.
Some repair shop software use integrations that can help you float information easily among your employees. Through these integrations, you can easily follow up on training sessions and float new tips to your team.
6. Assessing new training tools
Your training program should not remain static. As your business grows, its perspectives and needs change based on external trends, employee demographics, and availability of training programs and tools.
Keep conducting training programs and look for ways to enhance the training opportunities at your workplace.
Around 94% of employees prefer to stay in a company longer if they invest in their training. When you incorporate effective training programs, you give your employees the information and tools they need to succeed.
So if you are not already on board with training programs, begin now as it leads straight to the road of success.