Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2020 - 41

The most alarming factor is what a
company misses when they take this
approach. With no formal plan or path
to success, employees create their
own definitions and perpetuate bad
habits as they mentor new hires. Even
experts who feel confident in their
environment may have critical gaps
in their knowledge base, and with an
unstructured, on-the-job model, it is
hard to identify these gaps until failure
occurs. With the lack of consistency in
this approach, your experts will pass on
the same flaws to your new employees.

THERE MUST BE
STRUCTURE NOT
ONLY AROUND
THE TASK BUT
WHO THE NEW
HIRE SHOULD BE
PARTNERED WITH
TO COMPLETE IT.

In this article, we break down five ways
to achieve consistency in an on-the-job
learning program, as well as measure
its overall effectiveness.

LEADERSHIP
1GAIN
BUY-IN

Your leadership needs to be on board.
Without the layer of accountability that
comes from your leadership teams,
even the best designed programs
will fail. To clarify, leadership refers to
everyone from your executives down to
your frontline managers. There needs
to be an established culture around
learning. Milista Anderson, senior vice
president of learning solutions at FIS,
says, "Managers should genuinely

care about the development of the
whole person and not just about their
outputs." If your boss asks you 10 times
about your case work and never about
your training or development, the
silence says it all, and you prioritize
accordingly. Many leaders fall into this
habit - as they rush around putting out
fires which causes them to think in the
moment and not in the grand scheme.
To gain and maintain buy-in and
engagement with your leadership
teams, we suggest the following:
* Communicate the expectations of the
program to every level of leadership.
Be clear about what it will do and
what it won't.
* Build ways for them to be involved
that are easy and effortless.
* Ask for feedback.
* Clarify what success looks like to
them, and ask for data points.
* Follow up. Be tactfully aggressive
about your goal, and remind them it's
theirs, too.
Most leaders will state that - in
today's world - training staff is critical
for retaining good employees and
delivering an exceptional client
experience. This doesn't necessarily
mean those same leaders will follow
through with actions that support
their statements about the importance
of learning. This puts learning and
development professionals in a tough
spot. They can design a program
without support, but what's the point of
building a playground if no one comes
to play?

ADD OJT AS A
STEP IN THE NEW
HIRE ONBOARDING
PROGRAM

Building structured on-the job-training
opportunities
within
onboarding
programs is a great way to gain buy-in.

A big win for leadership with a program
that involves on-the-job training is that
the trainee is on the floor and doing
work. When a new hire comes aboard,
the team is typically handling more
work than usual. How quickly a new
employee can start carrying weight is
in the forefront of most leaders' minds.
The structural integrity of these
opportunities is key. There must be
structure not only around the task but
who the new hire should be partnered
with to complete it. To avoid a program
that quickly devolves into the wild,
wild, west, here are some elements
to consider:
* Define specific job functions the new
hire is expected to fulfill after their
initial training.
* Map individual job functions to the
learning content meant to build the
skill.
* Identify what your existing employees
need to support your new hires in
these sessions.
* Ensure the existing staff will have
the time and balance necessary to
provide a positive experience during
their time with the new hire.
* Confirm the staff understands the
expectations of the program.
* Prioritize the most common tasks first
to allow both the new hire and the
team to see immediate productivity
gained.
* Design feedback loops from these
sessions to improve the employee
experience.
Understanding the environment and
the workflow is critical to building the
structure behind the program. If the
training content is not relatable to the
work, you will quickly lose buy-in from
new hires and their employee trainers.
Take your time with this step. Be certain
the tasks targeted within your program
are the most relevant to the role.

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Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2020

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