Preparing Your Employees to be Their Best

It’s difficult to walk into a new job.

As a new hire, you have to quickly learn the ropes about company culture, expectations, and your role within the workplace. These temporary unknowns can lead to a greater sense of stress and anxiety on you while you acclimate yourself.

But this anxiety is absolutely preventable. When companies invest time and capital into effective training and development programs for new employees, you’re helped into your new job, not thrown in. Companies that purposefully implement onboarding programs better prepare their employees and help them be instrumental within the company. Not only that but the security that comes with training and open lines of communication increases employee retention. To build an effective training and development program, employers should consider incorporating the following.

Goal Alignment

By integrating company goals and initiatives into training, new hires are more likely to understand the purpose of each part of the training process. New hires are more likely to be actively engaged in training activities if they know the reasoning behind it.

Benchmarking Strategy

It can be challenging to determine the amount of information that a new employee is retaining from a training program. It is crucial for a company to include metrics within the training program, whether through testing, surveys, or even measurable and repeatable assignments. Metrics allow companies to see the impact of training programs and employees to view their professional growth since joining the company. Additionally, this can help tailor the training programs to be most helpful.

Relevancy

Training content must be presented in a way that caters to the new employees. Time is money, and companies and employees don’t want to waste either. The information must be applicable and distributed in a timely manner.

Leadership Engagement

The key to a successful training program is leadership support and participation. By having top-leadership involved in the program, the new hire sees the importance of the training program and the value the company places in the employee.

Training reinforcement

Learning is a continuous process. A new employee is not going to learn everything they need to know in one week or month. By using follow-up modules and activities throughout the first year of employment, the training period is extended and reinforced by refreshing content. Core content becomes more familiar and is more likely to be applied on a daily basis.

New hires are generally eager to learn and prove themselves in their new role. But is there anything in your company that they get snagged on or don’t understand? You can find out by gathering feedback from new hires.

New Hire Feedback can help companies gauge whether their training and development programs are hitting the mark. HSD Metrics® compiles survey responses that can then be used to identify areas of improvement for training programs. By acknowledging and targeting areas for improvement, companies can build more effective training programs that save time and money while starting a new hire’s tenure on the right foot. Contact us online or call 877-439-9315 today.