Best Practices When Building a Training Program

An effective training program provides major benefits for your company. With the right processes in place, training can make your employees more efficient by increasing workflow, leading to new ways of doing things, and even boosting revenue.

Below are some of our tips and best practices when building a training program.

1. Determine the budget.

Training an employee isn’t just about teaching them how to efficiently execute their job responsibilities – it goes beyond that, which is why you may have to put aside some money for it in the budget. Perhaps there’s an employee at your company who embodies the traits of being a great manager, but to enhance these qualities you may consider signing them up for a manager training course.

2. Create a goal.

Depending on the type of employee you’re training the outcome you want will be different. If it’s a new employee, the goal would be to create a training program that would help them learn their job responsibilities. If you want to take an employee to the next level, the goal would be to widen their abilities by shadowing another employee or taking a training course.

3. Measure your training program.

Ask yourself how the employee is responding to the training program. Do they have a better understanding of the new job? Are they responding well to new programs? Don’t be afraid to ask your employee for feedback. Maybe they need a refresher because they’re feeling a little overwhelmed or perhaps the tasks need to be demonstrated in a different way.

4. Consider the training platform.

Depending on what the employee is going to be doing at your company, how you train them may differ. For example, a booking administrator may benefit from one-on-one training as they would need to learn how to use the computer system efficiently to keep track of customers. Whereas a communications coordinator would learn best if small tasks like sending a newsletter were assigned to them to allow them to play around with the e-mail marketing system.

5. Keep the training consistent.

Consider creating a training schedule for your employee. Maybe training will take place during the first half of the day or maybe the day is broken up into two smaller sessions. By keeping it consistent you can ensure that as a company you are providing the employee with all the information that they need to do the job properly and the employee can keep themselves organized and alert with the tasks they are required to compete.

6. Make it flexible.

Remember that everyone learns differently. As stated in point number three, consider how your employee feels during training. Do you need to slow down and reiterate some concepts? Do you need to show them how to use certain programs again?

7. Make an investment.

Training is the biggest investment a company can make. By taking the time to properly train future and current employees, your company will benefit in all sorts of ways like increased effectiveness in processes, adopting new methods, greater knowledge of technologies, and not to mention it will make your employees feel more motivated.

Click here to watch President of TorontoEntrepreneurs.ca Marc Belaiche, CPA, CA discuss this topic.

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