During these tough economic times, people need to work smarter, not harder.

We highly recommend making sure your team members have all the tools to deliver and be as productive as possible.

Take the opportunity to invest in current staff with training and development activities. To keep costs down you might want to develop some in house training. Here are the top 10 things you should keep in mind to make sure you see a return on your training investment.

1. Assess your needs: Define what you want employees to deliver. For example, if you are planning a course on customer service, what are the top 3 things you want employees to do when greeting a customer?
2. Content: Have a good mix of theory and practice. Make the delivery engaging by having a few role play/simulation exercises where participants can put the theory into practice right away.
3. Ask for feedback: Once you create the training material, run it past a few employees to get some feedback on the content. Make sure it is effective and hitting the mark.
4. Train the trainer: Make sure trainers have the skills and tools needed to deliver engaging content.
5. Evaluate and follow up: Look for ways the training is being applied on the job to ensure you are seeing a return. For example, ask specific questions to customers about employee service on your comment cards.
6. Clear expectations: When people leave the training, make sure they know what is expected of them. Look for opportunities to see them in action and align your expectations with performance review discussions.
7. Keep it practical: Make the material relevant and as actionable as possible by using work related scenarios that employees are likely to encounter.
8. Keep it short: Deliver your material in 2 hours or less to keep your audience engaged. Anything longer and you risk losing them.
9. Keep it top of mind: At morning huddles, weekly team meetings and on bulletin boards, re-enforce the concepts and remind people of your expectations. A great way to do this is to recognize people who are doing it right; say thank you or share a customer comment card.
10. Create Job-Aids: Want people to deliver a consistent experience to your customers? Create on-the-job-aids that can include laminated checklists, reminder cards or visual process flow charts.

Derek Gagne
www.talentedgesolutions.com