Follow
I have been traveling a lot lately to help install new processes for businesses both on a digital side and from a business process perspective. I have run across many of the top trainers video platforms on my trips and employees really do like the daily short videos to get them going. Businesses have great information at their fingertips as never before.
Where I have seen some breakdowns is when employees finish the video and then not knowing what to do with the information. Once they take the test, once they run through a few quick questions, then it is out to the floor and back into the day to day.
I have trained thousands of employees in my lifetime. From hospitality, to customer service phone skills to sales, management and now automotive and the thing I have always worked hard on was how to take classroom/video training and bring it out to the employee’s day to day to have the biggest impact and change not only for the business but the employees themselves.
It is not easy, because it takes time and manpower to really implement training. So I would ask all of you who train, or the leaders who bring in training to take a moment and inspect your follow through.
Where I have seen the most success or have implemented myself is the following:
- Have a checklist or bullet points from the training session that you want your team to take away.
- Have the trainees explain each point and what it means to them in their day to day. How would they apply the training.
- Ask each trainee to choose one aspect of the training they will focus on and what “actionable” step will they take to implement it.
- Explain to the trainees how you, the trainer or manager will follow up to inspect.
- Agree to a timeline to add in the other bullet points.
By getting the team involved in the process of inserting the training into their day to day the first step of change happens. They are part of the solution and they are the ones deciding which part of the training they want to implement first. People will be more willing to attempt any change if they feel they are part of the decision process.
This process also allows the manager/trainer to follow up on agreed upon targets versus a different metric which could cause confusion or resentment. Too many times an employee is working diligently on something they feel is important only to be told they were wasting time because the manager had something else they were expecting.
Training done correctly and done over the long term is a way to increase productivity and efficiencies of your employees. Training with no follow through is expensive due to employee’s time being wasted as well as resources and potential customers. I think that if we can help take all of the great trainers information and make it pop off the screen and see teams using it, we all benefit.
What say all of you?
Thanks.
Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.