Employee training is an effective way for a business owner to ensure his company’s stability, growth, and long-term success. When done correctly – initially upon hire and consistently afterward – it can reduce employee theft, improve quality, cut down on mistakes/accidents, boost profit, even out cash flow, decrease turnover and increase customer/employee satisfaction.
Big bonus:
Unfortunately, employee training has become one of the most hated parts of a job. Owners, managers, and employees hate it for good reason. Immediate, targeted, individual employee training has been replaced with boring, poorly run, one-size-fits-none employee group meetings and written communication (i.e., emails, texts, memos, bulletin board notices).
The idea of managing and training people in groups, rather than individually, started many years ago. “Experts” decided that individualized training was “an inefficient use of time, resources, and money” and should be replaced with “more efficient” group meetings instead.
As is so often the case these experts did not understand human nature or learning behavior.
Owners are now trying to change and manage individual behavior through group meetings or interactions, which does not work. It has limited impact on good or average employees, and it definitely does not work with problem ones. The idea of a self-managing workforce is a myth – a productive workforce is made not born.
Here are three examples of unsuccessful employee training methods, which happen every day.
Sam has been showing up late to work twice a week for months. One type of owner will handle the situation by repeatedly talking about punctuality in the production meeting. Another kind will yell at everyone – in the hallway, on the shop floor and in meetings – about being on time. A third sort of owner will sit in his office and send out written policies.
But, no matter how an owner deals with the behavior as long as he does it on a group level, rather than an individual level, Sam will not change. In fact, what usually happens is more employees start showing up late. Group interventions are a poor way to address one person’s behavior. They undermine the owner’s credibility, he then loses authority and becomes weak.
Effective employee development requires a well-developed plan that is consistently applied to everyone. Meetings are good places to give information and do general training. However, the most successful employee training method is still individual attention – sometimes the old ways are the best.
At Cogent Analytics, we never stop looking for ways to improve your business and neither should you. So, check out some of our other posts for helpful business information:
