10 Ideas to enhance your training programme and get your new employees up to speed fast
When you’ve just spent time and money hiring the right person, the last thing you want is to spend months getting them up to speed. But bad training ideas could result in your new remote employees starting with a sour taste in their mouth.
Your training programme is make or break. It can set your new hires up for success or see them hating their new job within the first few weeks.
Good training ideas will help you build a great company culture, retain your most skilled employees and keep your remote team happy and productive.
1 – One size doesn’t fit all
It can be easy to schedule in a day of video calls or simply chuck every single thing that your new hire needs to know into a Word doc, but you could be wasting everyone’s time.
We all learn best in different ways, so it’s always a good idea to ask your new hires how they learn best and start from there.
People usually learn best in one – or a combination of – the following ways:
- Visually – these learners love visual demonstrations and seeing how things work in real-time. A screen share or recording should be a great starting point for these learners.
- Auditory – these learners will thrive when things are explained to them by a real person. Conversation, talking through problems and even rubber ducking will be great tools.
- Tactile – these people love to learn by doing. Encouraging them to download any programmes they need and to give things a go is key. Give these learners all of the logins, basic guidance and most importantly feedback you can and they will shine.
2 – Use tech and automation
Although it’s usually always best to keep teaching and learning 1-on-1, don’t be afraid of using some tech to save time.
Where you’re hiring multiple people into a similar role, you’re wasting precious hours going over the same content with different people. This is time you could be using to build your sales!
Instead of repeating yourself, use some tech.
We use Loom to make handy training videos for our new and older hires. It lets you record your screen, voice and camera and then share this clip with your team.
3 – Keep your video call time low
No one wants to be in a video call that lasts more than an hour, let alone all morning!
Video call fatigue can quickly creep up on you and sabotage your training efforts, so it’s best to keep your one-on-one time to short 30 minute slots.
Those 30 minutes could be used to go over new material. Then in the 30 minutes – an hour you spend off-camera, your new hire can go over what they’ve learned and complete a task. Then you can come back to the call after and review their work, go over any issues and move on to the next part of the training.
4 – Introduce independence
One of the great things about working from home is that employees have to be independent workers. This is something that should be encouraged from week 1!
Make sure that your new hire isn’t relying on someone else’s schedule for their first few weeks. They should be able to get through their tasks, manage their own time and have the room to think creatively and independently about the business and their role.
5 – Create a training dashboard
There’s nothing worse than scouring through a Slack channel trying to find a document link, password or resource.
So keep things organised by putting everything that your new hire needs to know in one place.
A training dashboard will be your new hire’s holy grail in their first few weeks. It should include every password, bit of important information and resource link they need.
It could also include a calendar detailing upcoming training times, dates and goals for the week.
6 – Use deadlines and goals
Speaking of goals, you’re missing a trick if you don’t use them in your training.
A great goal will motivate new hires and give them something to work towards. You can set these together in weekly or monthly meetings and use them to keep your training sessions focused and measure success.
7 – Fast feedback
I’m a strong believer that feedback is best when it’s fast. What’s the point in trying to train someone up when you take 2 weeks to review their work?
No one is going to learn if they don’t get quick constructive feedback. If you can do this within a few hours of your new hire completing their work you’re doing great.
8 – Team training
One aspect of training and onboarding that often gets forgotten is sessions with your entire team.
Your new hires need to know where they stand in the business, how they help it succeed and how important their work is. This knowledge will help them know who to turn to for help and give their work meaning.
This is something that has to be thought about in remote teams. It’s much easier to know who is on your team in the office – your desks are probably right next to each other!
9 – Review
Towards the end of your training period, it’s really important to take some time with your new employee to review how the training went.
What worked? What didn’t? Is there anything they’re still unsure about?
No one will know your training better than them, so be sure to really talk it through with them. This will help you understand more about how they learn, work and perform best.
10 – Make changes
Your training programme should be always changing and evolving. Hopefully you can use some of the feedback you’ve gained to make it better for the next newbie you train up.
So be sure to keep reviewing and altering the way you train.
These 10 training ideas for new remote employees should help you get your new hires up to speed, improve your retention and team morale.
If you need any help hiring or onboarding your junior employees, check out our hiring platform!