The Power of Strategic Training Systems
The Power of Strategic Training Systems
Pre-Summary: In this “The Power of Strategic Training Systems” blog, we will dive deep into 3 areas:
- How to cultivate and protect the company’s best processes to maintain and excel in success
- Ensure your team feels empowered by this system and does not develop job security fear
- Tips for setting this type of system up
Nicole here!
First off, in this world of ChatGPT and offshore writers, I feel it’s important I clarify that this content is NOT AI-generated and is actually written by me!
Let me set the stage here, as this may be the first time you are hearing directly from me. In my experience and true belief, training is more than an instruction to a process; it is a way to stack the company’s best of the best processes.
Good Training systems are the foundation of a company that can successfully grow, maintain growth, maintain quality, and maintain brand standards for years to come.
Does any of this ring a bell for you?
- Using SOP processes that are over-complicated
- Expecting staff to pass on proper processes to each other
- Expecting staff to all ‘speak the same language’ and ‘hear the same meanings,’ and no, I don’t mean they don’t speak English. People HEAR differently.
- The process of accessing training is not clear to everyone, and the cataloging of it is confusing or time-consuming.
- Not documenting EVERY position in the company.
- Not realizing that your best person can walk out of the door at any time with all of those best practices, NO ONE is 100% going to stay with you forever.
- No system for emergency planning around positions. For example, Sally in accounting calls out on a Monday morning, it turns out she has COVID and is hospitalized for one month; now everyone is running around trying to take over what she did and how she did it.
- Assign training management to people who have other jobs to do; training is always last on the long list of things.
- Expecting a high valuation of the company with no protective training system in place
- Wondering why new departments/locations fail or struggle
- Seeing training as an expense instead of an investment
- Unproductive team training meetings
- Non-productive task tracking and company discussions are not being implemented properly.
- Changes come from multiple sources, and team members have different viewpoints and understandings of it since it was in spoken instruction.
- Culture of totally open communication (just say it and expect it is all good)
- No KPI systems for monitoring training impact
How these things negatively affect the company.
Work done wrong unknowingly
Team members are confused about some things, but may not even realize they are or if they think they are, they do not say anything out of fear of being seen as weak or not smart enough, 99% of the time they just don’t even know they hear wrong or that anything is wrong with what they think they heard when they were told to do something.
Pressure on staff who do know the processes
You expect team members to talk and help each other and even train each other, WELL! Do you think they will always WANT to talk to that person?
Please tell me that you are not so dense that you believe your whole team love each other? and can communicate well on behalf of what’s best for the company?
People have different energy signals, and let’s just face it, some people just don’t jive, and that’s ok, they can still work together. You expect the person you assign to train someone to always be in a good mood and have the best day. Look, our personal lives affect us, PERIOD.
Stop thinking your team leads are always going to be in the best mood. Bad energy means the person receiving the message probably picks up on it, and either shuts down or just tries to YES their way out of the training.
The belief in Common Sense.
You expect the person you have that does the process best, should be able to word out what they do, time and time again. They are NOT a robot and sometimes we do not even realize the FULL steps to what we do. We assume what we do best, many times, is ‘common sense’, yet ‘common sense’ is a total make-believe assumption. No one is born knowing anything, yet when you know something so well, you push that term on other people. UNLESS you are a properly trained trainer, then you SHOULD know this is a problem, and every step needs to be covered in detail.
There is no way to know what is working and not working, so you base it on managers’ perceptions of the learner
KPIs, you track everything else but not training. If you don’t have a way to say, ok, we taught you THIS, and THIS happened, then how do you know the training worked?
Solutions to these issues
- Deploy a system of video SOPs, audio, easy step-by-step with photos, and shadow follow-up training. Stop using the graph, old style looking SOPs (where possible, these still work in some cases).
- Use a software! We have one we lease out and provide tech support, and you will be BLOWN AWAYby the pricing! And services that come with it! It is WAY better than trying to start your own and again throw it on someone else’s plate, and it’s WAY cheaper than hiring a training technical manager. However, if you do want to find your own software, there are tons of LMS systems on the market, just search LMS (Learning Management Software). Sign up for some demos.
- Each position should have an SOP; every task that the position does should go in the SOP document. Assign an SOP process, to EVERY person; it becomes sort of THEIR SOP. Every task they do needs to go in there, and this should be linked to a larger company systems management. This will also ensure if/when the person moves on from your company that, you know what they did and how they did it and can easily piece tasks out to other people or place someone in that roll.
Example: Master Company SOP Folder -> Jaime in Triages SOP -> Triages SOP Folder with a master document of job tasks that the position is responsible for. There are also SOP so
Software to help with and manage SOPs:
- ProcedureFlow
- Process Street
- Scribe
- Method Grid
- SOP Express
- Dozuki
Fix your training understanding.
- Assign KPIs to training.For example, if the team member takes training or SOP steps on how to box up a product or enter an invoice. You need to implement a system of record and tracking. This needs to be reviewed and documented. Make sure they know they are being checked the first few times, but then you need secret audits where they do not know someone is checking their process.
- Implement communication barriers; nothing can be taught by talking in the moment only; it must always be passed via SOP, video/audio/steps no matter what it is or how quick it seems! I promise this will forever change the landscape of your company for the better if done right.
Ensure your team doesn’t feel targeted.
- Ensure your team feels empowered by this system and does not develop job insecurity fears. Communication is KEY; do NOTstart this one employee at a time, as they will feel targeted. You need to have a clear plan of launch and then launch company-wide. You need to ensure you have a clear follow-up process, a person for them to ask for help from, clear deadlines. Also, an action plan with what happens when they don’t meet these deadlines.
- Do not let it fizzle out as another blank idea the company had! FOLLOW THROUGH! Once you get this set up and going, you will feel so relieved that your company knowledge is protected!
- Reward system: reward those who support it, and have a positive voice on the new systems, and get tasks done quickly.
Tips for setting up this type of system:
- Hire a consultant like myself; listen, you can give this to someone else and ask them to do this on top of everything else they do. This will not end well, possibly it will, but you are counting on them to have the exigence, see the vision, and care about it enough to be the driving force behind it. Consultants are brought in, get it going, set the foundation, get the forward motion going. Then, you can hand it to someone who has worked with the consultant. It’s way better than throwing this in someone’s lap!
- Find software that comes with help, like CellBotics offers. If not, just make sure you do the research! Use software that has tech support and someone to help edit content and load it as well; this will save on content and video editors (our software comes with this help!).
- Create a plan with a few of the core team members, but launch company-wide so no one feels targeted. Messaging should be that this is a new company training system and it will include rewards and benefit everyone. Of course, there can be more to the message, but this really depends on your company and team.
- Lastly, Do not back out of this when it gets hard.
In Conclusion
If you stick with this and get the systems implemented, you will see a one-eighty change in your company. What’s on the other side is the stress gone from your shoulders as to what happens when a person leaves and confidence in your future growth and quality.
I am very passionate about training and communication. In my next newsletter, I will dive deep into something called Meeting Moderators; you won’t want to miss this if you want to increase meeting productivity!
I’d love to hear from you and get topic suggestions; this is an anonymous form to complete for me to get ideas from you: SUBMIT A TOPIC
Do you want to chat with me directly? Here is my calendar: SET A DATE
Have an amazing week, and remember, always CONFIRM your COMMUNICATION was received the way you meant it to be heard!
Thank you for reading my blog,
Nicole Russell
Everything Training and Communication
Check out these blogs:
Meeting Moderators and Meeting Productivity on Overdrive
Extracting legacy information without creating job insecurity