Training your staff is essential to ensuring that your business runs smoothly and efficiently, with little room for error. Small business owners can train employees in various ways depending on the unique needs of their business. Some owners may have more success with in-house training, while others may incentivize graduate-level education or certifications.
Although training employees might look a bit different under the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, there are still effective online methods you can embrace to provide training.
Encourage and Subsidize Education
The single most effective option to train employees and make them more loyal to your business is to offer to pay for their college-level education. Graduate degree and certificate programs can be expensive, but they provide relevant, specific information that can help your employees excel in their role.
If you aren’t sure that you can afford to cover the cost of your employee’s education, you can offer partial tuition reimbursement or help pay for books and essential school supplies.
Develop a Training Plan
While general training can help improve the overall productivity of your team, try to focus your training on weaknesses that you have identified in your business. You also need to remember that each member of your team is starting their training with a different amount of knowledge — you can’t assume that everyone on your team has the same understanding of each of the parts of your business.
Accommodate these knowledge gaps in your training to make sure it is accessible and beneficial to each member of your team. Further, each training session should incorporate and expand on the information in previous training sessions. Structuring each session to use skills learned in the last sessions will keep information fresh and help your team achieve mastery in their roles.
Host Frequent In-House Training Sessions
If tuition reimbursement doesn’t fit into the budget of your small business, you can also offer in-house training sessions that teach your employees valuable skills specific to your business. FOr effective training, you need to make sure your sessions are scheduled and consistent — you can even use skilled employees to provide more role-specific training to new hires.
Additionally, to prevent training from interfering with the productivity of your business during the day, you can stagger training sessions to target the members of your team who may need extra help fulfilling the responsibilities of their position.
Use Apprenticeships for Promising New Hires
If you identify a member of your team that is particularly well-qualified or is catching on quickly to their responsibilities, making them an apprentice is a great way to provide specific training that can fast-track them to executive positions in your business. Apprenticeships also allow you to analyze the aspects of your business that need the most work and address them directly with the help of a specialized trainee.
Apprenticeships can also be valuable by making employees more loyal, and by providing them with a deeper understanding of the way your business operates. An apprentice will understand the operations of your business at every level, and hae the knowledge to efficiently address any problems.
