Don’t Make Your New Hire Regret Their Decision

Remember the days of sitting through hours upon hours of training sessions with those TERRIBLE videos? Yes, the ones so outdated some of the clothes are now back in style. Unfortunately, people are still living that nightmare as you’re reading this. There are companies in existence today that still mandate the ‘new hire training’ that takes place in a classroom with an HR person walking you through every, single, solitary document you receive as a new employee. A majority of the new hires are so bored out of their mind they are completely zoned out. The rest of them are reconsidering their decision making skills.

As a victim of the very boring and treacherous new hire training sessions, I can relate. I started a job at what I thought was a very exciting young hip company. After three straight days of eight hour training classes, I was seriously doubting any ability I may have had at making sound decisions. By the end of day three I was worn out, bored out of my mind, and already hating my new job.

Day one of actually doing my ‘job’ made me realize that I had learned absolutely nothing in those twenty four hours of training, except how to exit the building in case of a fire. I was lost in my current role and frustrated beyond belief. Thankfully, I had a coworker take me under her wing and help me learn more in the next few days than I could have ever learned in a ‘training class’. We literally were exchanging valuable conversations at the water cooler.

Even though my new coworkers were great in helping lead the way, I had a really hard time coming back from such a painful ‘training’ experience. It’s like experiencing a very bad first date. You can never really get over it for the entirety of the relationship.

Let learning happen organically. Studies show that people learn better ON the job where they have context as to WHY certain things are important. Plus, people learn more than 80% of the skills they need to do their jobs from co-workers* (people with similar job functions), not from a video that was created two decades ago. Don’t give your new hires a bad first impression of the company culture right off the bat. With the right tools, you can set your employees up for success and increase team productivity. Remember these things when selecting a solution for onboarding and ongoing training.

Ease of Use – Don’t replace training videos about how to do your job with a training video about how to use a tool that helps you do your job. Simply, find a social collaboration tool that’s intuitive and easy enough to use that anyone who knows how to browse the Internet can figure it out.

What’s in it for Me – Find a tool that eases a pain for your employees. No one wants to learn yet another system just so the company can track some stuff. Select software that actually benefits the end users as much as it does the organization as a whole.

Starting with these two ideas in mind, will help you narrow your search for a social collaboration tool that will keep your employees coming back for more learning.

*Cross, Jay. “Where Did the 80% Come From?.” The Internet Time Group