On-the-job training is essential in the skilled trades. This is especially true if you hire people without much experience in your industry. But too much training all at once can cause problems for your employees, from anxiety to the simple inability to retain that much information. Here is what you need to know.
Onboarding
Onboarding is the process of bringing a new hire into the company. It involves everything from filling out paperwork to learning about your organization’s history and traditions. Onboarding should be the first thing a new hire experiences, and it should take no longer than a couple of days.
Job Skills Training
After onboarding is complete, it’s time for your new hire to start learning the actual skills they will need on the job. This is where a lot of employers make the mistake of overtraining. Don’t try to pump everything employees might possibly need to know into their heads in the first days or weeks. Instead, try giving them just the essential information, such as training on safety gear, and then pairing them up with long-term workers for a shadowing period. This type of on-the-job training tends to be less overwhelming, because employees learn new things as they naturally arise.
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Goals
Long-term employee development can be highly useful in any workplace. It builds employee loyalty and satisfaction, while also giving you a pool of people to draw from as higher-level positions open. So you’ll want to develop employees who have a strong working knowledge of lots of different aspects of the job and the company as a whole.
But those are long-term goals. In the short-term, you’ll want to focus on getting your new hires to be fully comfortable in the role for which they were hired. Take a step back and consider what the actual day-to-day job functions are in that position, and train your new employees solely on those. Initial on-the-job training shouldn’t last more than a week or two, unless the role is extremely specialized. After the employee hits 90 days in the position and is showing signs of mastery, it may be time to start thinking about further on-the-job training to prepare them for the future.
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