By Mark Handley – Incipio Workforce Solutions

Training Transformation

incipioworkstg on September 1, 2020

In challenging times like these,

Organizations are often tempted to cut employee training and development programs. Even some of the most experienced leaders I’ve met feel training is something they can do without in a tough economy, or at a minimum cut it back to the bare essentials (compliance, onboarding, job skills, etc.). When revenue is decreasing and operating costs are going up, I can see how this looks like a no-brainer.

Take a

minute to

frame what

you’re asking

your people to

do

And you’ll likely start to see why training and professional development should be the LAST line-item that takes a cut. When times are tough, money gets tight – I get that. But right now, organizations are asking leaders, teams, and individuals to innovate like never before.

To enact change rapidly, and make sure it sticks.

To collaborate much more broadly.

To assist team members and external clients in working through massive changes to how their products and services are created, delivered, and supported.

Those types of initiatives require a training approach that is structured for efficiency and designed to enable your teams to drive the business to long-term success. It has to be customized, widely bought into, rapidly deployed, and universally adopted and executed on.

Effective training will not only improve workers’ skills; it will improve morale, which helps reduce expenses by contributing to employee retention. When job roles, expectations, success factors, and a host of other critical factors about your business change as rapidly as they have, and will continue to do so, your leaders will be the ones who make or break the effort.

WHAT DOES YOUR LEADERSHIP TRAINING LOOK LIKE?

Now is a great time to examine your training. Traditional training tends to be transactional, event-based, and often is just a single session or two conducted over a short period of time with limited follow-through and validation after the fact. That’s been appropriate for some things but highly ineffective with other focus areas, like driving true transformation in your culture and how your teams operate.

CONSIDER A NEW APPROACH

I suggest you take a new approach to training that is transformational. This training is longer in duration. It’s conducted across the organization with consistent follow-through. It’s action-based and has high levels of accountability.

GET FEEDBACK

While the training and development effort is underway, make sure you make time to get feedback. This will tell you how well the program is received and it will give you valuable insight into its effectiveness.

Engage people by asking for their opinion and suggestions. You’ll likely find they have a very keen understanding of the work they do, the opportunities tied to it and the paths for improvement.

Remember, it’s one thing to train your people on a specific task, issue, or organizational initiative. It’s another thing entirely to develop, nurture, and effectively prepare your teams to proactively identify opportunities, to naturally innovate and optimize, and to consistently work towards enhancing the value of your organization. Training your leaders and teams to transform requires the transformation of your training approach and methodologies.

Structure

Onboarding begins before the new hire walks in the door. Think about your first correspondence to the new hire. If you’ve ever signed up for Disney vacation, you’ll remember receiving a beautiful package in the mail with customized rubber bands and your name displayed on everything. The package sets up clear expectations and makes you feel special that you just spent a lot of money! Imagine that from a business perspective. How can you make new hires feel special about the money your organization is about to spend on them?

Your structure should include tasks for specific people in the onboarding process. For example, the hiring manager should be triggered to call the new hire with congratulations and details of what they should expect on day one. And it’s important the hiring manager be there to greet the person as they walk in the door before turning them over to human resources.

Got Mentors?

On the first day, it’s wise to introduce the new hire to a mentor. It could be someone who happens to be in the same job role, but if you have a person who started in a similar job role but has advanced, that’s a great person to select as a mentor. With proper guidance, a mentor program gives you the opportunity to begin setting up expectations and will go a long way to making the new person feel welcomed and engaged. This is a great time to bring your top talent into the mentor program. It will help them feel valued – even if they don’t have a direct “dotted-line” connection with the new hire.

Culture

You should be spending time in onboarding talking about culture. This is when you should promote behaviors that are most valued in your organization. You should be very specific about those behaviors and show how they apply to their job role. Talking about culture also gives you a great way to transition into setting expectations for 30, 60, 90 days, and longer. You can show the new hire exactly how they’ll be judged when it comes to performance reviews and possible salary increases.

Did you?

Once you’ve built the onboarding structure and you’re driving connections and stressing culture, you need to make sure all of this actually happens! There is nothing worse than having some leaders who don’t follow the onboarding program. I could argue inconsistency is almost worse than having no onboarding program at all. Make sure you have systems in place to ensure follow-up to measure the effectiveness of your effort. For example, talk with new hires at the 90-day mark and again at six months to get their feedback. If some portion of your process wasn’t followed, this is the time to regroup and revisit what may have been overlooked.