MightyRecruiterAs your business grows, the need for new employees becomes imperative. In order to increase your chances of having more productive workers, you need to have a solid training program in place. However, small business or companies that are facing a reduction in revenue may not have the funds in place for an expensive training program. Fortunately, there are various employee training strategies on a budget that you can implement that are just as effective as strategies that would cost you an arm and a leg.
Make Sure Your Goals Are Clear From the Start
As soon as you hire someone new, you want to make sure your expectations are crystal clear. You do not want a worker to have any misconceptions about what is expected from him or her. Let the new employee know that there are going to be performance evaluations from time to time. It can even be a good idea to say you are going to meet with the employee once every few months in order to discuss how the employee has gotten better, what competency areas need to be improved and what you hope to see in the employee going forward. This can give you a good idea about what topics should be brought up during future employee training strategies on a budget.
Cross-Training
Why bring someone else into your company to teach your employees skills they could easily learn from someone already working there? Cross-training is a common practice that is inexpensive and gives your workers a chance to work one-on-one with someone they already know. There are a few ways you should go about proposing this method to your workers: � Gauge your employees� interest in leading programs and decide which workers are the most qualified for this type of work. � Make sure your employees are ready to train others. This includes ensuring that their regular work responsibilities are being taken care of others while they are busy training. � Once a new hire has shadowed someone for a while, give them an opportunity for hands-on experience. Let him or her actually do the task and pay attention to the results. A good way to get more experienced employees to partake in employee training strategies on a budget and get new employees excited about it is to offer casual dress days or other little fun gifts.
Mentorship Program
As opposed to having someone lead a workshop, you can develop a mentorship program where a seasoned employee is the mentor and the new employee is the prot�g�. Again, you will want to make sure that the mentor has the time and desire to take part in this program. This can involve ensuring that his or her duties are being handled while they are watching over the prot�g�. Before the program actually begins, you should have both people meet with each other in order to get familiar and talk about what they both want to achieve. As with most employee training strategies on a budget, this program will not be as effective if a clear end result is unknown. Once the prot�g� has acquired the desired skill, meet with both the mentor and pupil to discuss how they felt about the program and what they would do to change it in the future.
Brown-Bag Lunches
This is a less intensive method of teaching employees new skills. Once a week or once a month, you can ask your employees to bring a lunch, meet together in a common room and have one of your workers lead a seminar while everyone is eating lunch. The topic can vary from one lunch to the next, and it is ideal to keep the program intimate and informal. A great benefit to this kind of training is that it does not take up a lot of time. It should be the length of a normal lunch break, an hour at most, so no time is taken away from your employees� regular responsibilities.
Know When to Call the Pros
Utilizing the resources readily available to you is convenient and cost-effective, but occasionally, a problem will arise that needs to be handled by a seasoned professional. It is important to recognize when something is not working the way it should, and while employee training strategies on a budget are good for the bottom line, sometimes you need to invest a little. Find the money to get an expert to come out to your business to lead a seminar or work with your employees hands-on to increase productivity. There are plenty of methods to give your workers the skills they need to succeed. Before spending a fortune on an expensive training program, try using some employee training programs on a budget. You will be pleased to see the stellar results you can receive. Mighty Recruiter has plenty of other resources and tools to help your business grow, so check them out at your earliest convenience.