Onboarding made easy: Creating training plans that empower new employees

January 10, 2024

Thinking critically about the onboarding and training of new employees is arguably more important than ever.

In a competitive hiring market, employees are seeking workplaces where they will be invested in, developed, and given meaningful opportunities to learn and grow in their role.

But this expectation comes with a great opportunity. Studies have shown that employees are more passionate than ever about ongoing training and development, naming it one of the top factors that define an exceptional work environment.

Reports by Seismic have also indicated that organizations that make strategic investments in employee training report 11% greater profitability on a year-over-year basis.

Setting up an efficient, meaningful internal training plan will get new employees up to speed more quickly, motivate them to take initiative in their new role, and set them on a great trajectory for growth within your organization.

Here are some tips to create great training plans for new employees.

Understanding a Training Plan

An effective training plan should tick a lot of important onboarding boxes.

They should:

Cover all administrative processes like direct deposit forms, tax information, benefits selections, and any other paperwork.
Introduce the new hire to their team and give as much formal and informal information about team dynamics, work styles, and processes as possible.
Familiarize and teach the basics of any tools and platforms that the new hire will be using as a part of their job function.
Introduce the new employees to company-wide philosophies like strategy, mission, vision, and value statements and explain how their work can impact the future of the organization.

Customization Is Motivation

The power of your people is your best competitive advantage, so helping motivate and empower new employees from their first day is extremely important.

When employees feel welcome they’ll feel motivated, and there are few ways to make someone feel more welcome than by creating a training plan that is tailored specifically towards their needs.

Each employee will learn and work differently. If possible, take some time before a new hire’s first day to find out some of their learning preferences: do they prefer to read instructions? Sit through a presentation? Do they find it easier to watch someone do a task and then repeat it?

All of these learning styles represent different ways to communicate the same information. But taking the time and effort to customize some of the training plan to fit a new employee's needs will make the training process more effective, but also indicate your organization's investment in their success in their new role.

Listen to Feedback

One of the best ways to create a great training plan is to get information from current employees about what was great and what was not so great about their training plan.

Identify some of the most proficient employees in a new hire’s role, or a similar role, and ask them questions about their training process.

Questions like:

What were some of the most beneficial conversations you had while training?
What things did you wish you knew sooner?
How was the pace, did it feel overwhelming?
What aspects didn’t feel relevant?

Use these responses to continually tweak your training plan to best suit your organization, departments, and teams.

Get The Team Together

Team-oriented training goes a long way for new employees.

Careers and Skills expert, Mark A. Herschberg described how a lot of organizations only train and onboard at a corporate level. While this is an important piece of the training puzzle, Hershchberg explains that training on a team or department level is much more important.

Team-based training offers valuable insight into the subculture of a team within a larger organization. It helps a new hire understand the professional and social roles of each team member, and helps a new hire begin to process the ways that their new team communicates,handles conflict, celebrates successes, and achieves goals together.

It also helps the existing team clearly communicate workflows, reporting structures, metrics, and other unique ways that the group operates.

So while high-level corporate policy, benefits information, and org structures are an important part of onboarding, a great training plan should include as much training as possible from the employee’s new team.

Don’t Get Technical

A lot of organizations will bombard new employees with company-specific language, technical jargon, or an avalanche of acronyms.

It can often feel isolating for new employees to be expected to understand the nuances of company-specific language and terminology from square one.

Pay extra attention to the ways information is being presented to new employees, and continue to explain new terminology to them until their team is confident that they are up-to-speed.

If you have a lot of company-specific terminology and language, consider creating a cheat-sheet with common words, phrases, and acronyms that have unique meanings within your team or company.

The Bottom Line

Creating great training plans for every new employee that walks into your company’s doors isn’t an easy task. But with some though, foresight, and effort, you can set-up new employees for success in your company quickly, and reduce the effect that turnover has on your business.

The initial stages of employment are when new employee’s start making mental decisions about what their future could look like as a part of your team. Investing in their training process and onboarding is a great way to show new employees the ways that your company and your people are unique.

In a competitive hiring market, it’s all about taking care of your people. With a thoughtful strategy for training employees, you can increase employee morale, reduce turnover, and ensure you are building the best possible teams for your business.