Smart employees are effective employees, and that goes beyond just sales and marketing. Ensure that your employees can handle anything that comes their way, from emergency situations to everyday circumstances. Make sure your workforce is ready to tackle them with smarts, savvy, and safety in mind. Here’s a selection of training programs that all companies should offer.
Orientation
We were all new once, and we all felt a little lost in a new environment. If you don’t have an orientation and onboarding training session set up for all new hires, then expect their first few weeks to be filled with chaos and confusion. Create a several-day process through which to familiarize the new employee with your systems, staff, and setup. Training should go beyond sitting in a room and lecturing them. Provide hands-on experience and observation around the facility and allow them to shadow more experienced workers as well. Teach your workers well, and they’ll be sure to blossom.
Health and Safety
No matter where you work, you need to work safely. Every workplace has its hazards and danger, and your employees need to know how to surmount or avoid them and what to do when the worst happens. Ensure they’re receiving regular training in the proper use of safety equipment, keep them updated on changes to your floor plan and where hazardous materials are kept, and conduct drills and reviews of what to do when things go bad. Also, offer active shooter training in the workplace and defibrillator and CPR certification to all employees on a regular basis. Everyone can make the difference between life and death.
Ethics
One would hope every employee has a moral compass and an idea of what’s right and wrong in the workplace, but sometimes even the best of us could use a refresher. Every workplace should offer sessions addressing sexual harassment, discrimination, diversity training, good business practices, and similar instruction. Ethics training eliminates any questions about what one should and shouldn’t do, and it encourages an atmosphere of trust and safety in your place of business since employees know you’re looking out for them as well as for each other.
Communications
Here’s one more example of the sort of training programs that all companies should offer. While every department serves a specific function, no department can survive without good communication with the others. That said, are your employees versed in writing, presenting, and representing your company? Communications sessions should review and bolster public speaking ability, letter and email writing skills, the ability to connect with others, and tips and tricks for making sales, hiring the right people, setting up presentations, using technology to put across ideas, and more.