I had a wonderful lunch experience this afternoon. I was invited to speak at the monthly Small Business Connection sponsored by the Warsaw/Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce. Met some great people and am looking forward to speaking with many of them again. I was asked to speak on the subject of customer satisfaction and how it is dependent on the employees of a business and the customer service they provide. I ended my presentation with some thoughts on employee training but ran out of time to share some of the practical observations I had hoped to pass along. So here are some of the thoughts I didn't get to share in the actual presentation.
Quality employee training begins by defining your businesses needs and goals. Look at your business through the eyes of your customers – or hire a third party to come into your business as a customer to provide an assessment of your customer service needs. Once you identify where your business is weak, develop training modules which address those weaknesses. Define your company’s short and long term goals as well as the standard of excellence you desire to provide your customers. Develop your training as a strategy to meet those goals and enable your employees to meet your standards.
The next step in employee training is identifying which employees need what training. Some training modules may be specific to certain departments or employees within your business. Don’t waste precious resources by offering blanket training to everyone which includes a great deal of information that is irrelevant to many of your workers. Once you have identified which portions of your training are appropriate for each of your employees, develop a training matrix which lists your employees and the training modules that each needs. Use that system to plan your training.
Once you have prepared your training and you know who needs what, implement your training program. Prioritize your training so that the most important aspects of the training are being offered first or the training that affects the greater number of your employees being offered first. Use a professional trainer – someone within your organization who has the skill to present the training in an engaging way or someone hired from outside your company to perform the training. Allow your employees to provide feedback from their training and tweak your training based on their input to maximize its effectiveness within your organization. Once your system is in place, make certain that the training materials become a part of your new employee orientation program so that everyone working for you is on the same page – pursuing the same standards of excellence and striving to achieve the same goals.
The next step in employee training is identifying which employees need what training. Some training modules may be specific to certain departments or employees within your business. Don’t waste precious resources by offering blanket training to everyone which includes a great deal of information that is irrelevant to many of your workers. Once you have identified which portions of your training are appropriate for each of your employees, develop a training matrix which lists your employees and the training modules that each needs. Use that system to plan your training.
Once you have prepared your training and you know who needs what, implement your training program. Prioritize your training so that the most important aspects of the training are being offered first or the training that affects the greater number of your employees being offered first. Use a professional trainer – someone within your organization who has the skill to present the training in an engaging way or someone hired from outside your company to perform the training. Allow your employees to provide feedback from their training and tweak your training based on their input to maximize its effectiveness within your organization. Once your system is in place, make certain that the training materials become a part of your new employee orientation program so that everyone working for you is on the same page – pursuing the same standards of excellence and striving to achieve the same goals.
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