Training staff is at the bottom of priorities for many companies. However, those who are leaders of the pack know that training and development exercises are not a waste of money. Quite the contrary, top managers see them as an investment in the human potential of the company.
The goal of any training program, whether it’s a fire drill or a flight simulator is to imitate reality. Therefore, a successful development program should try to be as real as possible. Only then will employees understand how they should behave in the situations they are training for. The following X training and development methods are the ones that companies use the most.
Ask the employees what kind of training they expect
In order for the HR department nit to guess what kind of training would suit workers the best, you should survey them to find out. Your present staff is the most reliable source of information about future training programs.
Your present employees know best about the processes and procedures they need additional info about. They have seen how the system works and know its drawback, which lies at the heart of organizing training and development exercises.
It is no wonder then that workers would appreciate if you brought in an expert to train them. This person can be a member of senior management or you can hire outside experts in the field needed. Once the development program commences, trainers should assert authority through knowledge.
A business of its own
Just like you have branches in your company, there should be a special division of the HR department dedicated to organizing and executing development programs. The strategic plan should clearly state the final goal and provide clear parameters and a timeframe against which the final outcome would be measured. Once you introduce the notion of responsibility among HR specialists you can expect tangible results.
Furthermore, don’t shy away from a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis which incorporated workers’ feedback we’ve discussed earlier. As the business owner or manager, make sure there are enough funds available for the successful completion of the development program. After all, this is an investment that top management will expect some of a return. A situation analysis is a great way to determine your company’s opportunities.
Before you are ready to implement a training and development program, you should perform test runs to see how everything the HR put on paper plays out in practice. For this purpose, you can use a small test group comprised of workers who have volunteered to participate.
Role-play can help
If you’re thinking about concrete training exercises your employees can engage in, then there is nothing more effective than role play. Alongside psychodrama, this technique engages roleplayers from a professional corporate acting agency that supplies you with actors, customized programs, training films, and support materials. The role of role-playing (pun intended) is to enhance your training program but it can be used for recruitments programs as well.
Innovations are crucial
A development program is not something you create in a single go and then use it for decades to come. No, the training and development plan is something that should be innovated constantly. For once, the technology can always be upgraded so you can progress from a whiteboard and markers to tablets and an interactive whiteboard.
As far as the instruction materials are concerned, they should be put together by people who have experience teaching. For instance, hiring a teacher who teaches children in a public school is perfectly OK since they are true experts in the field of teaching. In fact, you should bring in all sorts of experts until your managers learn to handle the educational part on their own.
How the final results will be measured
We’ve mentioned before that the training experience should be measured in some way. Measuring the results of a development program is a trait of only the biggest and the best companies who know how to manage their talent pool.
The reason behind this practice is not altruism but the desire to improve the development program. As new people join the firm, you should over innovative ways to train them and help them develop as professionals and individuals.
The measurements are carried out before the implementation of the training program and after it is over. Any changes and improvements in the conduct of a particular employee are measured at their work station, mostly by observation.
Before they are ready to evaluate their subordinates, managers too, ironically, need to go through a training program. There they will learn to look for parameters that will help them evaluate all the employees quite easily. Cumulatively, this would allow the management to speak of the entire training program as a success or a bust.
Providing feedback
Another goal of a training program that aims to replicate real-life scenarios is constructive feedback that workers get in the end. Their coaches and superiors should tell them how they did and provide feedback on whether there is room for improvement before reality strikes.
Training and development exercises, such as role-play, are essential for the growth of any company. Even more important is the need to make training procedures as real as possible so workers would know how to react to a multitude of business scenarios.