Paulson Training conducted research that discovered that employees with the highest level of commitment perform 20 percent better than those who aren’t. Furthermore, these same committed employees are 87 percent less likely to leave their organizations. This numbers confirm what trainers have known all along: Workers who enjoy their jobs, who have a thorough understanding of those jobs and are given opportunities to learn more, and who feel valued by their employers are more productive and positively contribute to their organizations’ bottom lines.
Essential to this process of developing committed employees is team communication. When execs, managers, trainers, and front-line workers effectively collaborate, the resulting success can be astounding. Enhancing team communication, especially with training processes, can lead to these dividends; here are three ways how:
1. Direct feedback
Too often, team communication is lacking during training activities. New hires may have questions about their jobs but have few options to get the information they need. Existing employees learning a new process may need something clarified but find that answers take a long time to arrive, if they arrive at all.
Today’s tablet-based training solutions address these problems by taking team communication to another level. New employees won’t feel so isolated if they can communicate their concerns, questions, and excitement to training specialists tasked with turning these hires into productive, committed workers. Veteran employees, especially ones learning and implementing new and updated procedures, can provide direct feedback to the managers and execs who not only are most suited answer any questions, but also will benefit from the front-line knowledge being provided from workers in the trenches.
There’s another benefit from direct feedback: Employees who are encouraged to ask questions and offer opinions generally feel more invested in their jobs. And as already stated, such investment results in more productivity and less turnover.
2. Best practices … in progress
Many companies institute processes and rollouts that will be executed at dozens, even hundreds, of locations nationwide. Team communication among all these stores can be difficult, if not impossible. However, tablet-based solutions can foster collaboration and improve best practices. Say an employee is learning a process, via content on an iPad, and notices a problem with it. He or she can attach a comment to the content for the appropriate manager or exec to consider. Moreover, that comment can be viewed by other similar employees at other locations. More feedback will occur, providing valuable information to corporate on how to improve the content, as well as giving guidance to workers nationwide on the problems they may encounter. Best practices can be created and adjusted this way.
Furthermore, team communication improves as employees across the country are collaborating to increase productivity. This camaraderie is priceless.
3. Video and audio messaging
Video and audio content is quickly becoming a staple of many companies’ training strategies. Moreover, it’s also turning into a valuable tool to enhance team communication. Today’s mobile devices are easily capable of taking video or recording audio, thus allowing employees to provide an accurate depiction of how training activities are implemented that is far more effective than any written report. The messaging can go in both directions as well: Trainers and managers can offer their own updates and even praise via video and audio.
In what ways has your company enhanced team communication for training activities?
