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As a company, a primary objective is to make profit irrespective of your business or industry. To make a profit and incur no loss, your employees have to be well trained and informed, so that they can carry out their respective duties efficiently. You want to be sure you are losing no clients or prospective ones, and you want to cut costs to the bare minimum. Effective training is one way to achieve such success. If management is able to train its employees, this will stir up their passion, improve engagement, and increase productivity.
It’s imperative for me to note that effort needs to be given to any training you are considering for your employees. It is not enough to carry out any training without achieving desired results eventually. I will briefly suggest ways to go about giving a training if your company needs the training to resolve organizational issues.
In this case, I am assuming that you have the support of top management (if you work in a hierarchical organization) and if you are an employer or business owner reading this piece, I believe you have by now concluded that a training is what your employees need.
1. Brief overview or introduction
Prior to the day of training, you should have prepared an approved (final) guideline or document containing what should be expected on the day of training. This guideline should also have been sent out to the trainees (employees) so that they can read it up and have a fair idea of what will be discussed on that day.
This is really important because you don’t want to have employees day dreaming or who have no clue as to what you are discussing on the training day. I always advise that you hand them copies of this document (possibly electronic copies) at least one week before the training date and also send a reminder (email) to them two days before the training. Everyone will be at the same pace on the training day if this is done.
On the training day, simply give an overview of what will be discussed subsequently alongside formal or informal introductions. Millennials seem to like informal introductions because it gives a more relaxing atmosphere which is of benefit. Be audible, gesticulate where necessary, and look out for communication cues.
2. Give them the information
You have laid the foundation, now is the time to give them the “juice”. Give trainees the information but avoid letting them “burn out” or get bored. This is the time to go over policies, procedures or other information that they should be aware of depending on the topic and organizational needs. Repeat if necessary but don’t do it excessively. This will help them retain information.
3. Use variety
During a training, use as many methods of training as possible. Variety is the spice of life they say. Personally, I always retain more information from trainers that incorporate videos while training. This is because I love videos and I hardly forget what I watch in as much as I love texts as well.
People are different and have different attractions. So as much as possible look out other ways to attract and gain the attention of your trainees. Use all senses to affect learning. You can use hands-on training, media, on-the-job training, simulations, case studies and so on. You want to present information to your employees in a way that they can learn and retain. This means you should balance out formal and informal training.
4. Involve activities/ Make it practical
If you will have a formal lecture setting then you should try to introduce learning activities, quizzes, discussions, and so on to gain the attention of your trainees. This will lift up the energy in the training venue. You can also ask the trainees to share their work experiences and explain how the training will be beneficial to them. The training should be one that employees can put to work when they go back to their job duties. It shouldn’t be something all about theory rather it should be practical. Try as much as possible to develop and present your training in a way that the knowledge may be used even after training and to the benefit of the company.
You also need to make the training session interesting to avoid getting the trainees bored and lose focus.
5. Allow feedback
At the end of the training hand out already prepared surveys asking trainees several questions, ranging from how the training went to how it has impacted them and more. I love making use of survey monkey but there are other survey software engines you can make use of to help make analysis easier to do. Otherwise, if the trainees are not too many, you can alternatively type out questions in word format and compare analysis on a later date. This will help you have an idea of the overall training program.
Also, I suggest you make the feedback anonymous because that is the only way you will derive true answers you need going forward. You want trainees to be honest and this is the best way to get their response. Through the feedback gotten, decide on changes you need to make at a future training. Follow up with trainees to ensure that they put training to use. Evaluate outcome of the training to discover if there is an improvement in employees which can be linked to an effective training. This will help you decide on next steps to take to improve or maintain productivity among employees.
Please note that all this should be included in your training plan well ahead of time.
I hope you found this article useful. If you need to speak further with me, please send an email to [email protected] or send a message via the Contact page and I will respond as soon as possible.
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Zinnyify 
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Zinnyify 
Photo credit: Gerd Altmann and unsplash.com
