Julia Weeks
After interviewing so many candidates and finally finding and hiring a great one, you want to make sure you provide the tools that allow your new hire to be successful. Training is key to any new employee’s success and you need to make sure your training is top notch.
1. Encourage a positive culture and environment
Fox Business points out that a “powerful introduction to the culture of the company is a critical part of an organization’s training process.”
If there has been any tension or conflict on your team, the time to clear things up is before your new employee starts. Clear the air and make sure the team environment is positive. Your new employee will be able to sense if there is any negativity in the atmosphere.
Help to maintain and foster that positive culture and environment by providing encouragement to your team and to the new employee. Make sure the entire team knows the new employee is learning and that mistakes will be made. Show appreciation and congratulate the new employee when tasks and responsibilities are mastered.
2. Personalize the training
Fox Business states that appointing a mentor to your new hire is a way to personalize the training process. While this is key to personalization of training, you also want to make sure that the training format itself is tailored to your new employee. Not everyone learns the same way.
Some employees respond better to hands on training, whereas others learn more quickly from an instructional style of training where you explain what they need to do and allow them to test it out themselves.
How do you find out what style of training works best for your new hire? You can always simply ask them what they prefer. Also, if the employee completed a personality assessment, their results from the assessment should help you discover what types of training methods would work best.
3. Pace the training
As Fox Business points out, your new employee is going to be learning and taking on a lot of information during the training process. Sometimes too much information at once can be overload and can actually make it difficult for your new employee to learn efficiently.
When you are developing your training plan, make sure that you have paced your training. Leave in plenty of time for information to be absorbed, reflected on, and reviewed continuously throughout the training. The more you spread out your training, the better chance you have of the employee retaining the information.
4. Don’t stop training
As a manager, it’s your job to ensure that your team is always learning. Just because a new employee has successfully made it through the initial training plan you put together, doesn’t mean that you are finished training that person. There will always be learning situations that can be turned into team training. You can also open this up for other team members to lead group training sessions, sharing tips and best known methods. Never stop training and encouraging your team to learn.
What are some methods you use when training a new employee? Please share your strategies below.
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