How to Train Your New Employees Effectively

Recruiting new staff can be a lengthy process. Scouring resumes, holding interviews, and deciding on candidates can take weeks. But just because you have settled on the best fit doesn’t mean the process is finished. Ensuring you have effective employee training programs to help your new hires adjust is the key to keeping them around and setting them up to benefit your organisation.

Why employee training is important

Did you know the average cost to hire an employee is around five thousand dollars? While that may seem like a lot what many employers forget is the time a position is vacant. Sixty-eight days on average in fact. That’s nearly two months of your team being under the pump, not to mention if employee training was not a focus in the past, the remaining team might really be taking a hit to their productivity.

Employee training and development is crucial to retaining staff, particularly those with the experience and skills that provide real benefit to your business. MAX believes in the value of training and because of this our focus isn’t just on getting our customers ready for work. We understand the support that new employees and their employers require, that’s why we offer support to businesses in working with their staff to meet their training needs.

Where to start

You want to make sure that the first few days show your new starters what your business is about. Setting the tone right from the beginning is important. From a training point of view this means making sure any premade presentations or online modules are good to go and free of errors. Any live presentations you intend to make should be practiced. Don’t just wing it!

Also keep in mind that not all training necessarily needs to be provided by a business leader or HR. sometimes the best lessons can be taught by the people that will be working alongside of them. Having some one that will be their colleague that has shown aptitude will give them a different perspective 

Think of your audience

Think of what is important for them to do their jobs effectively. While it may be good for different teams to understand what their colleagues do, the sales team won’t find value in explanations of the company’s IT infrastructure for example. You need to prepare your new hires with the tools to succeed, so make sure what your teaching is relevant to their role.

While thinking of the content it is also good practice to consider how you will deliver the training. Remember that not all people learn in the same way, its best to make sure your training is provided in a variety of ways to ensure accessibility for all and makes sense for the role. For physical jobs for example, sitting in classroom reading manuals is probably not the best way to get them ready for work!

Don’t lecture

Reading from manuals or watching e-learning slides has its place employee training programs but be careful. Too much time spent passively learning increases the chance of it not being retained. Try to include as many practical uses for the lessons they are learning, even if it's through the dreaded role-play!

Keep it social 

On that theme it's important to give adequate breaks during the day to allow the new team members to socialize with other members of the team. As well as keeping them more engaged while they are training it, will help speed long their integration within the team too. It also helps them better understand the culture of the company when they see it in real life.

Plan for the future

If they won’t use the skills straight away don’t teach it! Overloading new employees with information they may not get any chance to put into practice is a waste of time. Teach what they need to know when they need to know it and when they can use it.

Be aware that this is just a starting point for these new team members, employee training and development should be ongoing. In fact, lack of development is a key factor in staff turnover. So, ensuring that your staff are getting consistent training and development opportunities, will go a long way to retaining them.

Review and feedback are critical

Your employee training should be constantly evolving to meet the changing demands of the marketplace. Putting regular reviews in place for employees is great but employee training programs should also be standard procedure.

Also, don’t be afraid to get feedback yourself. To ensure this feedback is constructive you should be enabling an open and positive workplace culture. This starts with everyone being accountable and seeking improvement so you should be no exception. 

Whenever we place someone into a job, we make sure that both the customer and the employer are supported. If you are an employer and want extra support to help ensure you retain your new employees, talk to our team. We can also help large organisations develop more accessible approaches to recruitment and onboarding.