Employee training often gets a bad reputation, viewed as something that’s boring, mandatory and potentially useless.
Done well, training can be quite the opposite. Strong employee training can create a better workplace culture, improve safety and help employees feel not only prepared for the challenges of their job but also appreciated as if company leaders are willing to invest in them.
Corporate training can also be a way to empower employees, but how do you make this happen, particularly if you’re battling against a workforce that sees training as a negative?
Create Contextually Relevant Training
One of the biggest failings of the majority of employee training, as it exists right now, is a lack of context. Training may be giving employees the information and facts, but it lacks the surrounding context that makes that training relevant and actionable.
When you provide a context within your employee training, you’re giving trainees the opportunity to engage their critical thinking skills and develop problem-solving skills.
Define Expectations
Your business may have a strict set of rules and guidelines in place as well as an employee handbook that reads like an encyclopedia. Despite this, in many cases this isn’t showing employees what you expect of them in terms of performance and long-term goals.
When you clearly define and communicate expectations during the training process, it allows employees to feel more comfortable in their roles. With clarity, it’s also easier to develop ways of meeting these expectations, rather than spending their time trying to guess what’s needed from them in the workplace.
Implement Self-Paced Training
One of the fastest ways to incorporate a sense of empowerment within training is to develop courses that are self-paced. This leaves your employees in control of how they’re training, which tends to improve engagement and retention.
Also, consider launching on-demand training accessible on a variety of devices.
Personalize Training Paths
e-Learning provides an affordable and attainable way to development and maintain individualized training paths that are going to leave employees feeling valued and empowered.
Individualized training can also allow you, as the employer, to get a better return on your training investment.
Recognizing and addressing unique individual differences amongst employees during training helps foster a sense of independence, which empowers them to feel comfortable making decisions, taking risks and meeting challenges.
Deliver a Fail-Safe Environment
Failure isn’t something that should be avoided at all costs. Instead, failure is an incredibly valuable part of the learning process. Unfortunately, this isn’t often something factored into training.
By creating an environment where employees feel like it’s okay to fail but also learn in the process, you’re empowering them to make future decisions outside of the training environment.
If you’re worried you can’t afford failures, utilize e-Learning as a training delivery method. By using e-Learning you can easily and inexpensively use features like scenarios and case studies that ask employees to evaluate situations and make decisions without real-life consequences.
Design Training With Collaborative Elements
Part of empowerment is about encouraging employees to discuss things amongst one another, learn from one another and share and receive feedback.
Use collaboration as part of online training with features like video chat, discussion boards, forums and instant message capabilities.
Focus on the Positive, Acknowledge the Negative
Empowering employees isn’t just about dwelling on the negative or their shortcomings, but it’s also not about only singing their praises.
Provide training feedback that acknowledges the good and the bad and also sets benchmarks for improvement.
Now it’s your turn to sound off—how do you empower your employees through training?
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