Blog Entry

(View Disclaimer)

You’ve poured lots of time, money, and resources into building a top-notch team. You’ve sought out and hired highly qualified candidates with loads of potential. You’ve provided them with the resources they need to hit the ground running. Now what?

Contrary to popular belief, employee training isn’t a one-time-only event. Although orientation training is a crucial part of the process of bringing your recent hires up to speed, training should also play a key role in ongoing employee development. In order to ensure that your team members remain at the very top of their games, you’ve simply got to make training a long-term priority in your organization.

One more thing to consider: not all employee training is equally effective. Spending a couple of hours mumbling your way through a vague and outdated training manual is not a good investment of anybody’s time. In order to get the very most out of the time you dedicate to employee training, you’ve got to train yourself to be an effective teacher.

Not sure how to devise training methods that will resonate with your team? Looking for ways to liven up and refresh your standard training sessions? Use these tips from leading industry experts to step up your training game.

Cultivate a culture of learning in your organization.  When managers dread training, it’s likely that everyone will follow your lead and regard training as a chore to put off and avoid rather than an opportunity for professional growth. Make a point of framing your training exercises as positive and beneficial, and try to recruit candidates who are curious and espouse a lifetime love of learning.

Focus on what’s important.  To maximize the efficacy of your training programs, narrow your focus to emphasize only those skills and concepts that are of central importance to your organization. Find out what it is that’s holding your team back and then address it with practical and memorable tips and how-to’s.

Elicit feedback.  After you’ve completed a training session, ask the employees who participated to assess the efficacy of the program. A brief, informal survey conducted in two parts—the first immediately after the session has ended and the second several weeks later—will help you get a handle on how well your staff was able to comprehend and implement the concepts presented in the training session.

Measure progress.  If you’re really serious about making the most of your employee training program, take steps to determine whether your employees are benefiting from the sessions that they’ve participated in. Look for a business metric that is closely linked to each session’s topic, such as the number of sales closed each month, and track it before, during, and after a related training session. If you don’t notice a significant change in the weeks and months after the program, it may be time to go back to the drawing board and revise your training methodology.

Is training a top priority at your firm? What are your favorite training tips? Talk back in the comments.

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.