Staff training is perhaps the most significant yet most undervalued leverage point any business has in maximising profitability, quality, scalability and revenue generation.
So many small business owners complain that ‘no one does it as good as me’, well guess what?
That’s because you haven’t trained them properly!
To be fair, building a proper staff training system is a pretty significant undertaking, but again, like so many other elements of the staff management equation it delivers massive long term benefits to your business.
A solid staff training system delivers benefits such as:
- Fast induction of new employees
- Rapidly increase productivity of new employees
- Less dependence upon existing key staff members
- Consistency of product and service delivery
- Improved quality
- Improved customer service
- Better reputation
- Increased employer of choice status
- Easier delegation
- Improved morale due to clear progression pathways and satisfying peoples need for growth
- Reduced workload on you the business owner
- Foundation of a turnkey business operating system
- Increased profitability
- Increased Return on Labour
So, how do you go about developing a solid staff training system?
In this case we’re focusing purely on the internal aspects of training related to ‘how we do things around here’, not the external skills such as trade specific skills. The assumption is that you are hiring people who are already trade qualified.
The first step is to identify all the tasks that need to be carried out by an individual within the business. This should already have been done in the Role Description stage.
The second step is to develop the correct policies, procedures and work instructions to complete each of the key tasks of the role.
Once this is done you can move to step three where the tasks should be prioritised in order of importance for being effective in the role and then entered into a spreadsheet, database or software system where training information can be recorded and managed for each individual in the business.
Someone in the business should also be accountable for ensuring all training records are up to date and that each employee is either fully competent or on the pathway to being fully competent in their role.
Finally, you need to decide who is best to train each individual. Ideally it will be a peer or their direct manager as these people are the ones most likely to know the processes best and are also in the position of benefiting most from having members of their immediate team up-to-speed and competent as quickly as possible.
This is the final article in this series on How to Manage Staff, and hopefully by now you have a pathway to develop your own staff management system. We understand that not everybody has the resources or maybe even the aptitude to develop a system like this but it’s something we’re really good at. So if you’d like a hand, we can get it all done super-fast with a lot less hassle than doing it yourself. If you’d like us to help build a customised staff management system for your business simply contact us here and we’ll be happy to help.
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