Hiring an employee is like the gunshot fired at the start of the race. But the process of turning your employees into long-time top performers isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. It takes a lot of planning and coordination to reach the end, and everyone requires some kind of training plan. Once an employee is successfully onboarded, HR hand off the baton to training and development managers.
While the concept of employee training is simple (imparting skills and wisdom into employees to help them perform better), the implementation is anything but. You have to think about the scope of training, what skills are needed across disciplines, what specific roles require, and how to imbibe your culture in the middle of everything.
Because trainers like to be hands-on, a lot of the process can be very manual and involve lots of checklists and meetings. Training and development teams often find themselves running sideways or out of the way to try and coordinate all the activities. In the end, they wear themselves out when they are inches away from the final goal.
But there are ways to keep the personal feel of training and development while moving away from a lot of difficult and taxing work. While strategizing your training and development program, you can use a few tips on top of all the hard work you put in.
Tip 1: Devise a Game Plan
The most important part is creating a solid plan for your training program. Each role in your organization requires different kinds of expertise and belongs to a different skill matrix. You need to craft a plan for each person joining the team and ensure they all get the attention and training they need.
Here are a few tips you can incorporate into your training and development plan:
- Keep the new joiners notified on what’s lined up for them, so that they are prepared.
- Ease people into internal jargon and acronyms.
- Assess and identify skill gaps early on rather than when it’s too late.
- Allow employees to play a role in creating their own training plan.
- Gather feedback on the training program to remove redundancies the next time.
Tip #2: Get Organized
Create a master list of all the training programs you plan to run. Identify which ones are for beginners and which ones cover more advanced topics.
Do you have the subject matter experts to teach these topics? What stakeholders do you need to consult with before implementing the programs? Do certain programs have prerequisites? How will you assess the effectiveness of each training program?
Tip #3: Create Digital Forms
There are two clear processes as a part of any training. One is the logistics that is handled behind the scenes. The other is the participant registration.
For logistics, you may need to collect certain important data on a form. Where will the training take place? How long will it be? Who needs to be informed? What materials need to be ordered ahead of time?
For participant registration, you may need an entirely different form. If you have an internal workflow management system, you may be able to create a form that already grabs important information like name, ID number, manager, and other essentials. Each training program may also require unique pre-questions and policy information to give to the participants.
Tip #4: Automate Workflows
After creating your forms, think about the workflows that you need to create. Who needs to approve the training? Who approves the participant list? When does the facility team need to know about preparing a room? Do you need to create any purchase requests or travel requests?
When automating a workflow, you can immediately bring in all the important stakeholders so that no one gets missed as a part of the training session.
For participants, your workflow may also include informing their managers, giving overview documents, directions to the venue, and many other steps including capturing feedback at the end of the program.
Using Kissflow HR Cloud for Training and Development Automation
Using a workflow management platform like Kissflow HR Cloud, you can create as many automated processes as you need for different types of training. By automating the process, you can free yourself to focus on the content of the training rather than worrying if there are enough pens and notebooks.
Try Kissflow HR Cloud for free and see what it’s like to take the manual out of training and development. Give it a shot for a free demo and see what you think!
