Overwhelming And Outdated Onboarding: Strategies For HR To Improve Training For Today’s Workforce

5 ways to improve employee training

According to a recent employee experience survey run by eLearning Industry, 2 in 5 (43%) employees called their new hire training “outdated.” Unfortunately for those new hires, that creativity and enthusiasm of getting a new job seem to wane once they sign on the dotted line. And more times than not, bad onboarding is to blame. 

Also, another shocking statistic was that bad onboarding experiences led 1 out 3 new hires to regret their decision to join a company. To add to that, the State of The Employee Experience Report findings exposed a disconnect between employees’ desire for continued learning and employers that offered training opportunities, which were often seen as outdated, not relevant and “a waste of time.” In fact, roughly half of respondents in healthcare (51%), technology (50%) and finance and insurance (49%) felt overwhelmed during this time. 

As you can understand, it’s imperative to try and identify upcoming corporate culture trends and strategies that HR departments can leverage to improve training and create better employee experiences. If you want to increase employee retention rates and keep top talent, you have to do more than offer mundane training and outdated guides. 

Let’s take a closer look at some of the best strategies HR teams can use to improve training beyond onboarding.

Best Strategies HR Teams Can Follow To Improve Training

1. Engage with your employees and gather employee feedback
We cannot highlight enough the importance of embracing employee feedback. Gathering, analyzing and acting upon consistent employee feedback in real-time is the foundation of improving the employee experience. From recruiting and onboarding to ongoing engagement plans and exiting, by asking employees to share their opinion, companies can tackle issues sooner than later. 

Feedback is the cornerstone to training and development, leading to a much more positive employee experience. For example, you can use engagement or training software to send out surveys and pulse polls to learn more about how employees feel at a given moment. The insights you gather can help improve your company culture and prepare for the future. Or maybe you have many Gen Z employees or Millennials and you need to bring your training online and add some gamification to the mix for better engagement. 

Good onboarding means your company should make new hires feel welcome. Additionally, they must feel valued and comfortable at their new jobs, or else they might walk away. Have you included compliance, clarification, confidence, connection and culture into your onboarding process? If you don’t ask, you won’t know. Plenty of times employees share ideas you couldn’t even imagine.
 
2. Build a cultural vision for your company, define values, identify issues
Company culture is such a powerful tool, and good HR teams know that. Your company culture can impact not only recruiting efforts and employee morale but also impact sales and profits. What you stand for as a company and how your employees act based on your core company values matters. So, when you have a great company culture, you are able to attract people who want to work or do business with your company. 

It's also a great way to inspire your employees to be more positive and productive. Think of it as a well-thought-out way of keeping employees happy and reducing turnover. Smart organizations know that a strong and positive company culture can be a force to reckon with. If you haven't already, consider starting your cultural transformation – and remember to let new hires know about your values from day one.  

3. Set goals and create metrics to measure progress and business impact
If you're offering training just because you heard it's good, maybe you should think this through. There should always be a plan as to why you're offering training opportunities in the first place. Maybe you're focusing on increasing employee retention, or you want to attract top talent and need more incentives. Or perhaps you've made a clear decision to grow your business by X % in the next five years and need to work on that. Whatever the case, your training initiatives will be more effective when you have goals and objectives in mind. 

Gather stakeholders and decision-makers in your organization and decide how you envision your business two or more years from today. Ensure you get input from managers and employees, as this gives you better chances of fulfilling expectations and achieving your goals. Conducting industry research, getting customer feedback, changing regulations and defining skills needed to future-proof the business will also play a big part in your decisions. When your goals go hand in hand, it's much easier to complete your organization's mission. 

4. Match training and development with employee and management goals 
For training and development programs to be successful, HR teams need to eliminate the mismatch between the training goals and the objectives of the organization. If you want to maximize the benefits of corporate training, you must find common ground between training your teams and getting results for the business. 

The biggest problem of all training programs? Connecting the learning outcomes to the business goals of your company. So, what you need to do is to first identify your company's objectives. Then you can formulate learning goals based on the organizational objectives. Afterward, you can turn the set learning goals into learning activities. 

But don't let them stray from your organizational objectives. For a successful training program, you need to create the curriculum and learning materials around these activities. If you want positive business outcomes, you need to make the investment and do the work. Either way, a training needs analysis is a must. 

5. Consider leveraging technology like HR software, engagement software, and LMS tools
Just saying you have goals isn’t enough. You need to find a way to keep them in order and track your progress. Also, you have to be able to see the impact of your training initiatives on the business. To make your life easier, you can leverage some of the best LMS tools, employee engagement software, and HR software in the market. Do everything in your power to deliver the best employee experience and have employees wooed from day one. 

By utilizing the right tools, you'll manage to motivate people and get them to focus on working together. Using tech to prioritize goal setting and align training to business needs will not only propel you forward, but it will also fuel ambition and help everyone believe in the mission and the vision of your company's future. 

Ultimately, goals keep everyone accountable and tell you what you truly want. When setting goals, keep in mind they have to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). Remember to celebrate milestones as you're getting to your end goal. By tracking and analyzing progress towards your goals, you can stay true to your mission and progress towards success and growth. 

Summing Up

Companies that assess their current training offerings and focus on finding ways that will improve training and development will benefit all employees and leaders alike. When you improve the employee experience via training and development, HR teams can boost a company's productivity and performance. And if that alone isn’t enough, you get to future-proof your business by equipping employees with all the skills needed. 

It’s no secret that when you invest in your people, they will invest in your business and will want to stay on board for the long run. It’s not just that it saves you time and money. Having effective training programs also attracts top talent and is the key ingredient to scaling your business. 

Christopher Pappas is the Founder of eLearning Industry. Christopher, who holds an MBA, and an MEd (Learning Design) from BGSU, is an eLearning blogger, EduTechpreneur, eLearning analyst, speaker and social media addict. Connect Christopher Pappas Follow @cpappas