I recently came across this chart listing some of the most pervasive problems leaders have in training employees. The chart breaks down both on-the-job and formal learning pain points, but today I’ll focus on addressing how your company can rectify growing pains with the on-the-job training. Many companies assume on-the-job is synonymous with playing the learning process by ear, but this isn’t the case. While it might be less structured than formal training, an organized process is just as important in on-the-job training. Without these few key elements, your training won’t be as effective as it could be.

Lack Feedback and Development

The biggest barrier to effective on the job training is “poor post-learning feedback from [the] manager.” Although the performance reviews you’ve recently conducted might seem good enough, 47% of employees want weekly or quarterly feedback. This makes regular constructive criticism during the training process vital because it’s part of the learning process; you have to track employees during training through your internal learning management system in order to give team members actionable feedback.

Poorly-done feedback can hurt your employees’ ability to grow as well as their desire to stick around. Studies have shown that 55% of employees cite a “lack of growth opportunities” as their greatest frustration with their work. In order for your company’s on the job training to matter, you need to make your employees understand how what they’re learning now will influence their career path. Use milestones and benchmarks to help employees understand that impact and stay on track during their training.

Lack of Application

Employees want to learn how to perform better and expand their role within your company. Without the ability to practice what they’ve learned in training, you’re wasting the valuable time spent in employee education. What’s more, you’re wasting your own time developing these training programs if your employees can’t apply them to their actual role; studies show that up to 30% of corporate training materials companies develop are wasted.

If that sounds like your organization, you may need to restructure post-training to make that new knowledge useful. Whether you choose to use projects as catalysts for employee education, or a new spin on an everyday task, your team needs actionable ways to use their new skills. When you create these training programs, have specific tasks in mind for employees to incorporate their training so their effort - and yours - is not wasted.

Lack of Relevance

Remember when you were in grade school, sitting in math class? That new formula you learned, albeit easy enough to understand, seemed useless; you thought to yourself, “when are we ever going to use this?” Unfortunately, many employees, like the students in math class, find their training irrelevant. According to the chart I mentioned, “low relevance to business challenges” and “low relevance to the job” are the 5th and 6th most-cited barriers to on-the-job training. Making this training applicable to an employee’s current role is crucial to embedding them into the company culture. Yet only 32% of employees think their compliance training last year was engaging, and only 39% thought it was pertinent.

In order to make these kinds of training sessions more relevant to employees, you need to directly integrate it into their individual roles within the organization. Have them talk to other members of the team about their responsibilities. If there’s a workflow for each tasks that runs through multiple team members, guide them through that workflow step by step. This lets employees know how every part of their compliance training fits into what the final product looks like.

On-the-job training is vital to the success of your employees, and requires a process to track development regularly, provide valuable feedback, teach employees how to apply what they’ve learned and make sure they understand the relevance of their new knowledge. Once you have these processes and workflows in place, it’ll be easier to utilize these employees in more complex and time-consuming projects.

Bio: Sean Pomeroy

While selling other companies software solutions, Sean worked with Michael Warden to design over a dozen applications for different organizations and industries over the years. Sean now focuses on the vision for the company, business development, and continues involvement in the software design of Cyber Recruiter, applicant tracking system and Cyber Train, learning management system. Want to see what Visibility Software has to offer? Take a demo now.

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