When a new employee joins the team, expectations are high.
The organization invests heavily in new hires, just as it invests in new software applications. Just like with software, it’s imperative to get a positive ROI on each employee. If an employee is not trained, he or she will simply not contribute effectively to the organization, and the company will lose more than it gains from having them on board.
Each time a new person is hired, there should be an employee training plan in place to ensure successful onboarding and optimal productivity.
Here is your guide to creating an effective employee training plan.
Get the right tools for the job
The first step in creating your employee training plan, is to make sure that your employee is set up for success with the right hardware and software for their particular set of responsibilities. A new salesperson for example needs a CRM, data enrichment, and an outreach tool for example. Here are some questions to help you or the team manager clarify what each employee needs in his or her toolbox:
- What are the employees big picture goals within the organization?
- What tasks will the employee be performing?
- What tools are essential for completing said tasks successfully?
- What tools would optimize the employee’s tasks further?
Once you have these questions answered, you are ready to start your training plan. If you know the goals for your employee, big and small, and you know the tasks that he or she will be doing in order to fulfill those goals, then you can determine which tools you need to purchse.
With the right tools, now the question is: how can I make sure my employee is proficiently trained in all of these tools simealtanously?
Train for the longhaul
Imagine your new employee sits through several days of training videos, completes hands-on exercises, and feels confident that she is onboarded and ready to go.
A week later, one of her most-used applications pushes a mandatory update. The user-interface is suddenly completely different, there are about twenty new features, and your new hire is yet again obligated to spending several days re-training. For the organization, this training time is costing them. And for the employee, this training frustration can lead to poor motivation and performance.
Instead of creating a training plan that is short-sighted, what if you could train your employees in a way that would be effective no matter what software changes are around the corner?
Training for the longhaul means that your investment in your employee and their investment in your company is more secure and more profitable. This is where a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) is a game-changer.
Not sure what I’m talking about? Check out WalkMe Workstation, one of the DAP solutions that is revolutionizing the employee experience:
Align training across all platforms
Once you understand how essential digital adoption is to effective training, you’ll see why your training plan needs to accommodate not just several applications, but any and all applications that your employees might use.
Is it really possible to prepare to train your employees to use software that they don’t have yet? Yes.
DAP provides what we call in-app training, which means that the several days employees spend in training programs are no longer relevant. Employees are able to dive right into their tasks, and will “train” while they work. In-app guidance, automation, and a friendly chat-bot are available across any and all software platforms in your tech stack. So the investment in DAP is an investment in effective training for platforms that you don’t even have yet.
Bring your plan to the right stakeholder
It’s a paradigm shift to realize that the best training plan for your employee is actually a platform. But DAP is more than just a platform. It’s an all-encompassing solution that drives digital adoption of all software, at scale, and results in a positive ROI for both employees and tools.
If you are a manager, you probably aren’t the decision-maker in whether or not DAP is an investment that your organization is ready to make. The best way to ensure that your employees are trained effectively and will drive revenue is to bring this discovery to the right stakeholder. Remember, you want your new hires to onboard as quickly as possible so that they can contribute effectively, but you know that short-sighted training will actually drain your company in the long run.
For a solid explanation of why DAP will drive not only your employee experience but also your customer experience, read our white paper, Breaking the Experience Silo.
