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Training

Six Things Your Employees Want

by Kelly Ketelboeter on April 29, 2010

The importance of our employees sometimes gets lost in the shuffle between focusing on the bottom line, meetings,  focusing on your customers, meetings, focusing on your brand and yes more meetings!  Employees directly impact your organizations bottom line.  They are the ones that bring your brand to life.  They are the ones that take care of your customers.  They are the ones that often get missed.

If your employees could write you a “Dear Santa” letter, I bet the following would be on it.

Your employees WANT:

1. To know what you expect

You may be thinking they know what’s expected, it’s on the job description.  All it really takes is common sense.  Let me ask you, when was the last time you reviewed your job description?  Does it really tell you what is expected?  Or does it tell you about the job duties?  And common sense, well let’s just say it’s not all that common any more.  What you consider common sense is not what someone else may consider common sense.  Clearly state your expectations and do it often.  Effective leaders coach to the expectations.

2. Training

Employees need to be given the tools necessary to be successful.  Make sure they get all the training they need to meet and exceed your expectations.  Teach them what success looks like.  Even top performers benefit from training.  If an employee is exceeding your expectations that’s fantastic!  Don’t just pile on more work or forget about them.  Help to develop other skills outside of their job duties.  Training helps to develop knowledge and skill sets.  What are you doing to help develop your employees?

3. Feedback

Feedback can be both positive and developmental.  Either way, be sure you give it to your employees and frequently.  Employees want to know every single day where they stand in terms of their performance.  Don’t wait for your annual performance review or even your quarterly review to provide feedback.  Let each person on your team know what they are doing well and where they need to improve.  Believe it or not employees want feedback and want it frequently.  Make providing feedback to your employees a priority!

4. Recognition and rewards

Most employees aren’t motivated long-term by money. A personalized, hand written note goes a lot farther than that 5 cent an hour increase in pay.  Recognizing employees both in public and private goes a long way in teaching them the right things to do.  And guess what, they keep doing those things!  When you recognize or reward an employee make sure you focus on specific behaviors and the impact of those behaviors on the expectations.  This way you will come across as sincere and the feedback is personalized.  Let your employees know you care and care enough to recognize and reward their efforts.

5. A coach and mentor

Employees want to be challenged.  A great way to do this is to coach and mentor them.  As we are challenged we need on-going support and guidance.  Ask your employees what their goals are.  Find out what will help them.  Ask for their input and feedback.  Show your employees the potential they have yet to realize.  We all have potential sometimes all it takes is someone to help us unlock it.  Set goals, review goals, celebrate successes, engage your employees by talking to them.  Provide the guidance they are craving, even if the craving hasn’t hit them yet.

6. A fun work environment

Fun at work?! Yes, fun at work.  We spend a lot of time at work.  A sure fire way to engage your employees is to make work fun so that the work is fun.  My good friend Tim Porthouse recently wrote a great article on creating fun at work.  It’s not about having games or contests or team building days.  It’s about connecting with team members and customers.  It’s about igniting a passion. It’s about creating an environment where people want to come to work, especially on a Monday!

What else do you think employees want?  How are you giving your employees what they want?  We would love to hear from you, I am sure we have only scratched the surface!

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Training + Coaching = Results

by Kelly Ketelboeter on March 9, 2010

Recently, I was asked the question, we have trained our employees and we aren’t seeing the results we want, what should we do?  The simple answer to this question is coach your employees.  Without coaching, training isn’t going to get us the results we want.  Let’s explore this a little bit more.

In most cases less than 20% of the skills learned and knowledge gained in training programs are actually transferred back to the work place and are still in use one year later. Research shows that when the new skills are not used within 30 days, 90% of the knowledge will be lost. All of that time and money that was spent on training will be wasted if the employees fail to apply the training immediately.

We have to realize that it takes a lot of effort for employees to use the new skills they learned in training.  This is because often times it is something new and they have to change the way they do things.  That change is uncomfortable. If the employee doesn’t practice and receive continual feedback from their coach we won’t get the results we are looking for. Without the support of the coach, the employee is likely to become frustrated and stop trying to apply the new skills.

Coaches can make a tremendous difference in the success that employees will have in transferring recently learned information back to their job. To increase the likelihood that the employees will use the skills we need to involve the coaches and have an understanding of their impact to the success of their employees.  Here is what coaches can do before, during and after the training to support the process.

What the coach can do BEFORE training. First of all, and most importantly clearly communicate the specific need for the training to the employees. Make sure they understand exactly why they are going to the training program and specify the particular skills that you want them to focus on.

In addition, tell the employee why the training is important to their job and to the team and how it will contribute to the achievement of their goals. In other words, let the employee know the relevance of the training and how it will relate to their current job. This prepares the employee to get the most out of the actual training session.

What the coach can do DURING training. Provide an atmosphere that allows the employees to fully concentrate on the learning process. Don’t schedule meetings during the training or interrupt them with messages.

Reassign the training participant’s workload. This way the employee will not be faced with an avalanche of work on their desk when they arrive back at work. Instead, they will be able to devote their attention to new and more productive ways of doing their job based on the information they learned in the training session.

What the coach can do AFTER training. Absolutely conduct a post-training debriefing. Allow the employee the opportunity to tell you and other co-workers what they learned and how they intend to apply it to the job. Through the debriefing the coach will learn what they should be coaching them on and where they need to focus their efforts in catching the employee doing “it” right.

Provide a lot of encouragement to the employees to try the new skills and give them every possible opportunity to practice the new skills. The learning is reinforced through practice and application, not by thinking about it.

If you are looking for results from employees we have to combine training and coaching.  Training by itself will not get you the results you are looking for.  Think about ways to incorporate these items in the development of a training program and how you can support the coaches and you will begin to see results.

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