Whether your goal is for successful onboarding, keeping your employees up to date with relevant skills, ensuring the glass tapping interns are engaged, or improving morale and retention - you need a training program to fulfill your workforce's needs.
With more than 50 million millennials (Source: Pew Research Center, Millennials surpass Gen Xers as the largest generation in U.S. labor force, 2015) joining Generation X and baby boomers in the workforce, employers need to prepare for the future. While typical companies run and hide when they hear the word millennial, modern organizations are looking for ways to embrace them and online employee training is their best bet.
Training tailored to your employees’ needs keep them engaged, which enhances productivity by up to 38 percent (Source: talentculture, 6 Eye-Opening Employee Engagement Statistics, 2014), and boosts retention. As Forbes contributor and GL Group chief people officer Lisa Whealon explains, supporting employees’ career development (Source: Forbes, Train Your Employees And Increase Your Bottom Line, 2016) demonstrates that “you’re invested in their future, building morale and trust in the folks that work for you.”
Ready to take your onboarding training online but not sure how to get started? Here are three simple steps to building the foundation of a successful online employee training program that will get lasting results.
1. Define Training and KPI Goals (Create a framework)
First things first: Take advantage of the many available online (Source: eLearning Industry, Top e-Learning Resources For You, 2015) and offline (Source: eLearning Industry, eLearning Conferences, 2017) resources to familiarize yourself with course creation. While you want fast results, taking the time to do your homework will help you identify and establish the appropriate style, tone and content of your training program. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your training program. You will also find several examples of courses you can use as templates.
People are most responsive to training that addresses their needs, assess how the characteristics of successful online employee training(Source: CAREERwise Education, What Makes a Successful Online Learner?) best fit into your own departmental context. Key factors to consider:
- What actions should learners be able to perform properly by the end of the course or training program?
- What KPI or business metric should be impacted as a result of the learning fostered by the course?
- Will the course be accessible on a variety of devices anywhere at any time?
- Is the information relevant to their daily work and useful in a variety of situations?
- Does the training not only evaluate learner results, but also encourage their feedback and use it to improve the program?
Remember that as much as your department needs higher-quality staff training, optimizing for success requires first examining issues from an employee perspective.
2.Outline and Create Content (Start with onboarding)
After establishing the framework for online employee training, make sure every aspect of new hire onboarding leads to a stronger team (Source: SchoolKeep, The New Hire Checklist — Your Guide to Onboarding New Employees, 2017). Onboarding is the perfect time to shore up weak spots in team culture, set goals, answer process-related questions and promote development.
Encourage coworkers to reach out to their new teammate, and make sure someone is always available to answer the questions that invariably arise during the first few weeks and throughout the learning curve.
Nurturing a new employee’s skills and praising their accomplishments cultivates collaboration and a greater sense of commitment. Invite participation from more established employees and you’ll build a cohesive and healthy team dynamic.
3. Track Engagement and Collect Feedback (Keep the training going)
Since you invest a significant amount of time in your employees, you’ll want to ensure that they stick around for the long haul. While simply providing ongoing online employee training reduces turnover (Source: Chron, The Reasons to Train in a High Turnover Business), there are several other considerations involved in decreasing your department’s churn rate.
Be sure to remain open to user feedback (in addition to other metrics), as it will help you generate better results in the future. Important metrics to track include:
- How many employees accessed each course?
- How many employees completed each course?
- Were employee experiences positive overall?
- What would employees like to learn more about?
- Did the course impact workplace behaviors?
- At what rate are employees enrolling in further training?
- How were the KPIs or business metrics defined in Step 1 impacted by the administration of the training?
Refining online employee training programs enables your team members to become better problem solvers and increases productivity immediately, while boosting morale over the long term.
When training is done right, everyone wins
Online employee training should both firmly establish new hires in a successful work environment and provide opportunities for continued growth. Responsiveness to user feedback and other metrics will enhance course content and efficacy while enhancing the larger team dynamic.
Once you have established a course, fine-tune it and offer ongoing training to address your workforce’s evolving needs. With each successive implementation, you’ll spend less time maintaining your program and more time celebrating your team’s wins.
If you’re looking to get started with online training, you can sign up for a free 14 day trial with SchoolKeep.
