It’s no secret that bringing a new employee on board is a gamble as well as an investment. You want to know that they’re going to complement your existing team with that rare combination of creativity and ambition, and that they’re going to stick around for the long haul.
A big part of making sure that investment pays off is taking a personal interest in their development as a member of your team. That all starts with quality training. Organizations across many industries opt for video training courses and tutorials, and there are many instances where video training can be valuable. Say, for example, if you don't have enough staff to allocate mentoring time to senior members of your team. However, today I’d like to discuss some of the reasons why face-to-face training is also important for building a strong culture of communication, productivity, and, perhaps most importantly, happiness.
Oversee the Learning Curve
One of the biggest barriers to employee retention, is the inevitable learning curve — that length of time (sometimes a week, sometimes a couple of months) that it takes for your new hire to learn the ropes and become acclimated to life in their new role.
That’s why in-person training is so important: it helps you oversee the learning curve and, when it’s appropriate, adjust it. The first thing to keep in mind about this hands-on approach is to avoid overwhelming your trainee. Let them start slow. It’s already tough enough trying to retain important information for the first couple of weeks so let them learn at a gradual pace.
And perhaps most importantly, give them context for what they’re doing. It’s not enough that you just impart your expectations and expertise; make sure they understand why things are done a certain way, and whenever it’s appropriate, give them opportunities to give their own feedback. Who knows? Maybe they have some ideas of their own that they can bring to the table. That’s an opportunity you won’t have if they’re sitting through a video tutorial.
Don’t Automate the Personal Touch
It’s important to think of new hire training as more than just a way to impart the skills necessary for your employee’s position. This period is also where they’ll get their first taste of life in the office, their first immersion into the company’s culture, and when they’ll make their first connections with their co-workers. Don’t just throw them into the deep-end — show them around.
Furthermore, beyond the all-important company culture angle, this kind of personal touch is also much more conducive to learning itself. To put it simply, human beings thrive on interaction and learn much more effectively in an environment that stresses face-to-face communication.
Although it’s very easy to defer to training videos thanks to modern technology, there are benefits to doing your training in person. We’ve already mentioned a couple of them, but one thing we haven’t covered is the value of body language and behavior. Gestures, intonation, posture, voice volume, and a great many other factors all play a huge role in how people take in, digest, and make use of new information. Reading company procedure out of a stuffy manual gives a clear enough idea of basic expectations, but hearing it from a company veteran provides the kind of experience that just can’t be replicated any other way.
The importance of the personal touch also manifests in other ways. A 2008 article published in Management Science suggested that video training materials, for example, cause new hires to become distracted with superficial qualities, such as how “likeable” the speaker is, rather than on the material itself. Quality, face-to-face training seems to ameliorate this kind of problem. As we discussed above, body language and gestures aid in the retention of new information and help make the learned material feel more personal and relevant.
Tips for In-Person Training
If there’s one important part of the training process that can’t be overstated, it’s this: new hires will almost never think of every pertinent question on the first day, or even in the first week. Face-to-face training gives you the unique ability to anticipate issues and questions. It gives you a platform on which to put your experience to work. What were your unanswered questions when you started working? What’s something you wished you knew on day one? When is the first-floor restroom the busiest, and where the heck is the microwave? These are all things that no training video can impart; it’s up to you to welcome them into your home, so to speak.
Another practical matter worth considering is just what kind of materials you’ll be providing your new hire with. A tidy stack of manuals or a folder full of PDFs might contain information pertinent to their new position, but some of the more arcane knowledge might slip through the cracks if you don’t take a personal, proactive approach. Consider including things like:
- A seating chart for the building so they can more easily find the people they might need to interact with
- A map of the surrounding streets to help with parking issues
- A directory of local businesses and restaurants so they can get to know the area quickly
This kind of personal touch will go a long way toward making them feel comfortable and confident in their new position.
And finally, remember to make yourself available. This really can’t be stressed enough. Even if you’ve compiled a really spectacular pamphlet of official and unofficial introduction materials, stressing your approachability and open-door policy might just be the most important thing you can do.
New hires want to know that they have someone they can come to with questions or concerns, and turning yourself into a resource is the best way to make them feel like a valued member of the team.
