For all the work that goes into attracting qualified candidates, it’s natural to feel tapped out when it comes to expanding or improving your employee training and development programs. However, take note because there are important changes you can make that require minimal effort to implement.
While many factors are at play in retaining top talent, a quality onboarding program, followed by a robust employee development program, plays an important role.
In this ever-changing employment landscape, many employers likely are beginning to feel weighed down by all the “need” for change.
But here’s the good news: Small changes to “how” you train and develop your employees can lead to deeper engagement and minimize churn. And that’s a win-win for everyone!
Top 10 Training Tips for Effective Training and Development
- Create a Solid Onboarding
- Align Training To Support Your Corporate Culture
- Have Clear Training Goals
- Understand Employees’ Skill Levels
- Tailor Training for Your Organization
- View Training as an Investment
- Consider Multimedia
- Match Employee Needs With Right-size Training
- Follow-up on Training
- Make Sure Training Materials Are Centralized
- Bonus! Training Tips Takeaway
1. Create a Solid Onboarding
Properly training new employees is essential. A solid onboarding program will make new employees’ transitions easier and reduce turnover risk.
2. Align Training To Support Your Corporate Culture
To help employees “walk the walk,” not just “talk the talk,” it’s crucial to create a training environment that helps employees know and understand what drives your corporate culture. A positive company culture helps create a cohesive, productive, and satisfied team; all training should support and align with it. When done right, training and culture work hand-in-hand to support and grow teams.
3. Have Clear Training Goals
Before beginning a training session, make sure goals for the trainee and the training itself are clearly communicated.
4. Understand Employees’ Skill Levels
Knowing an employee’s skill level prevents training that may be either too advanced or redundant and will ensure training is effective and empowering.
5. Tailor Training for Your Organization
Tailoring your training to better facilitate training material and employee preferences is more likely to keep employees engaged. Choosing an appropriate training platform, whether hands-on or virtual, team-based or individual, provides a more effective outcome.
6. View Training as an Investment
It costs money to train employees well, but it is also costly to replace and train a revolving door of staff, so approach it as an investment in the company’s future.
7. Consider Multimedia
Employees likely will be more engaged if their training is interactive and not just a person reading from a slide or notes. Video or other media-type platforms help engage employees from the start.
8. Match Employee Needs With Right-size Training
Your employees have busy schedules, including interacting with residents, and they are invested in doing the work you hired them to do. So make sure your training fits within the demands of their day. Don’t create one long training session. Break it up into small, highly-focused pieces of content – also known as microlearning – so that it fits more easily into their schedules and doesn’t create additional stress or a feeling of overwhelm.
9. Follow-up on Training
Measuring success using qualitative or quantitative markers is imperative. The only way to know if training is successful is to provide follow-up, feedback, and support to the trainee.
10. Make Sure Training Materials Are Centralized
Employees will be less engaged with training if they struggle to find training material, so keep files easily accessible and in a central location. Better yet, provide a digital platform that makes training easy to complete at any time and on any device.
Yes, a few of these require an investment of time, talent, and resources, but others can be implemented immediately with little or no expense.
While the current state of employment can leave employers feeling fatigued by change, an introspective look into “the way we’ve always done it” often shows change was needed long before now.
Implementing best practices backed by sound learning science research is good for employees, but don’t overlook the benefit it also brings to your organizational health and the overall bottom line.
If the purpose of onboarding and employee development training is truly to empower and engage employees, build a vibrant corporate culture, instill loyalty, and help advance skills and abilities, then it’s important to do it well.
Training Tips Takeaway
So what changes do you need to make to ensure your employees aren’t left feeling stagnant? Do you have a learning management system that engages employees, helps them achieve new goals, and builds confidence in their performance?
If not, why not? Recent studies are clear – particularly post-pandemic – that having a robust training program is critical in the dynamic multifamily landscape. Are you willing to risk having employees leave because someone else is willing to invest in their advancement?
So, where does your organization need to improve? Creating an effective training and development program is possible for all organizations – regardless of size or resources. And when you start with these top ten training tips, you’ll be well on your way to building a culture of learning that encourages, equips, and empowers employees for the long haul.
Want to learn more about how to optimize your training? Talk to a Grace Hill expert today!
