Why do I have to personalize my employee on board?

Build a better boarding experience

Why do people ignore manuals? Are they too lazy to read, too proud to take advice, or too impatient to get their Swedish curtain rods together? Or is it the manuals’ own fault?

It can be. The main weakness of manuals and FAQ pages is that they offer a one-size-fits-all solution. Even the most thorough manual can not anticipate every use case or take into account the background of every user. However, instruction manuals should be so, as the cost of personal guidance for each buyer of a reasonably priced product would be excessive.

Unfortunately, it is common for businesses to follow the instruction manual approach in their employee training, especially during the on-board experience. A key goal of employee boarding is to start developing each individual’s potential – and the instruction manual approach is not helpful for that. What is useful is a personal learning approach: training tailored to each learner’s set of needs and level of expertise.

Web-based training, or e-learning, can be effective in delivering a personalized learning approach, even if designed without specific individuals in mind. An eLearning course can provide personalized on-board training and learning by:

• Assessing the level of expertise that a learner already has and starting with the right level of complexity
• Encourage learners to interact and personalize their own training experience
• To become a resource that the learner can save and use as a work tool

Benefits of personal on-board training

Let’s look at some of the benefits of personalized e-learning used for on-board employee training.

It saves money for the company in the long run

One-size-fits-all on board employees is cheap at first, but one size rarely fits all. When new employees do not get what they need, they tend to take one or more of these actions: wasting time pursuing the knowledge they need, doing things wrong because they missed the key concepts, or leave because they are frustrated.

And when a new employee leaves, it can cost more than $ 1,000 to train their replacement. It’s much better to spend that money in advance on a personal approach that keeps them around.

It supports equality

One-size-fits-all training ignores differences in cultural background and variations in learning styles. This can leave people behind who have the aptitude for a job but do not have the context to understand certain concepts in the training. When training is personalized, knowledge gaps are taken into account, bringing equity to the on-board program and overall employee development process.

How to implement personal training

So how do you implement personal training? There are many aspects to this process – here are some tips.

Investigate employees to discover their training needs

This can take the form of opinion polls, interviews or aptitude tests based on the skills that drive the company’s success. It tells you what topics are needed by some of your employees, what is needed by everyone and what is not needed by anyone.

Incorporate Assessment Quizzes into e-learning modules

This practice adapts individual modules to each learner. It takes a little more effort on the part of the instructional designer, but can save learners many hours by allowing them to skip unnecessary content — or seek training at a more basic level if necessary.

Establish a Library of Training Modules

In some companies, the most important training need is for employees to be competent in a variety of simple, discrete tasks. In this case, a modular approach to training works well. When the company’s training exists as a searchable library of simple units such as PDF documents, PowerPoint decks, or short videos, employees can simply pick up the task-specific training they need and ignore the rest.

Establish a Mentorship Program

Mentoring is one of the oldest methods of job training and is still extremely effective. And it does not have to be expensive or time consuming — since so many other training resources are available, it can be used as a complementary program to steer an employee’s training in the right direction. Mentorship can benefit from:

• The employee, by identifying the right content on which the employee can focus and the right approach to learning it
• The company, by discovering what training topics are most needed to develop the workforce in the right direction

It does not have to be a major overhaul to personalize your employee training – try some of these tips and see if you see results. But for the best possible result, a custom e-learning solution designed by training development experts may be the way to go.