6 Ways to Train Your Recently Onboarded Employees

Employees are the heart and soul of every organization. They play a key role in defining the success path of an organization which is why it is important to consider your organizational goals and culture while hiring new employees.

Now, most companies pay a considerable amount of attention to the hiring process, but sadly, it is only up until the finalization of the new employees. Once both parties have signed the offer letter, organizations think their role ends and the employees’ role start. To some extent, that is true, but between their joining and their contribution, there’s a significant lag time. The time that should be spent on onboarding, training, and equipping them with the right resources so they could perform their tasks well in the future.

The process of onboarding and training new employees is time-consuming and can go wrong a thousand ways if the process is not standardized and tailored to the new employees’ roles and responsibilities. Additionally, in such a scenario, the said lag time can grow exponentially resulting in financial loss for the company.

On the contrary, if the lag time is utilized to onboard and train the employees well, the organization will be reaping its benefits for the years to come or up until those employees stick with the company. A recent finding by Gallup suggests that highly engaged teams are 21% more profitable and contrary to popular belief, employee engagement actually starts from the moment they sign their offer letters.

Since onboarding and training employees are crucial to their contribution to the organization, we are going to explore a few great ways organizations can effectively train their newly onboarded employees.

But before we explore the ways to train new employees, make sure to have updated standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place. Having SOPs would help the new hires navigate seamlessly through training sessions as well as their daily duties after the training.

6 Effective Ways to Effectively Train Recently Onboarded Employees

While some of the below-mentioned ways might be familiar to our audience, we have tried to curate new pieces of information to help upgrade your general understanding of the topic.

1. Tailor your training

In most companies, the human resource department is in charge of putting together the training program for their new hires and fortunately enough, most of the time, it is done in collaboration with the respective departments.To better tailor these programs to individual needs, Predictive Index assessment can be used to identify specific skills gaps and learning preferences. Since the HR department has limited access to and knowledge of tools, technologies, techniques, and processes of the departments, the training programs might lack the necessary technical aspects of their roles.

While this was the norm, it is time we shake things up and maybe let the head of departments put together a tailored training program for their new team members. There are many alternative software solutions for work training apps besides Dozuki which are more intuitive for remote workers, like SweetProcess. This would make the training period more fruitful and tailored to their jobs adding value directly to their understanding of the role and maybe skillset.

To take this one step further, the HODs could also include digital adoption solutions for new employees in crafting the training program by understanding their preferred methods of learning.

According to Kerry Andolina, Head Of Human Resources & Global Diversity for COMME des GARÇONS, Dover Street Market, “Training should always be tailored to the employee. Have an open dialogue about how they learn best.”

2. Set the right expectations

While training programs are targeted to onboard, train, and maybe upskill new employees, they can also be used to communicate expectations and discuss their crucial contribution areas.

Communicating in detail about their roles and key result areas they will be responsible for will help them make the most of their training session. It is advisable to communicate the expectations through the means of email within the first week of their joining.

Needless to say, it is crucial to ensure that the training program should align with the expectations communicated.

3. Have one-on-one meetings at regular intervals

Are you tailoring your training program? Check. Setting clear expectations? Check!

The next thing in your process should be setting up regular one-on-one meetings with the new employees that would help you connect with them. And to make the most of such meetings, ask new employees to set the agendas and lead them which can build their confidence.

Such meetings are also a great way to create a safe psychological space for your new employees where they can share non-urgent ideas and issues and maybe ask questions they might not be comfortable asking otherwise.

To break the ice during your first one-on-one meetings, you can tap into this interesting list of 101 questions by Josh Evanish or this exhaustive list of 130+ questions divided into various categories from building rapport & trust to being a coach to your team.

4. Create an assessment process

Having a thorough assessment process would enable open dialogues among the new employees allowing the organization to make the most of the training time. One of the most preferred assessment tools is DISC, a behavioral assessment tool that helps assess the levels of dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance among employees.

This tool essentially helps organizations understand their employees’ work styles, motivators, communication styles, and much more. For instance, if a new employee is high on “I”, they might need to socialize more with the team and give the organization’s culture and atmosphere more importance.

Using such tools and having an assessment process would open communication lines with the new employees on various subjects and would also enable fruitful future conversations.

5. Leverage onboarding automation and communication tools

One of the points highlighted in a recently published article by Forbes on strategies for training new employees efficiently was about leveraging automation and technologically advanced tools for onboarding and training new employees.

According to one of their 13 human resources expert board, Cecile Alper-Leroux, UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group), “Leverage tech tools and automation to streamline the time-consuming admin tasks that come with bringing on new employees. When new hires don’t have to spend time on cumbersome paperwork, both employees and their managers can focus on training, mentorship, and immersing themselves in the company’s culture from day one.”

Advanced tools like Whatfix can help in hosting important onboarding documents like employee handbooks, training manuals, company-specific documents with mission statements, core values, compliances, and role-specific documents having a detailed description of their jobs, resources, team structure, and more.

Additionally, such tools enable organizations to measure the impact of their training programs through the means of employee surveys, detailed insights into training material usage, and more.

Furthermore, once your employees are onboarded, it is important to equip them with the necessary productivity and team collaboration tools to ensure they work together toward success. These powerful tools are why digital transformation is such a need of the hour for organizations big and small.

Over to You

Every new employee is expected to work collaboratively with their team members, other teams as well as remote teams (all thanks to the pandemic). To enable and empower them to seamlessly integrate within the company and different teams, training them properly on various aspects of their roles and business is crucial.

Without proper onboarding and training, your organization can experience a high employee attrition rate which hurts financially and otherwise.

The above-mentioned ways would help you ensure your organization’s newly recruited talent is well-trained and empowered to do their day-to-day jobs well.