Employee Training - Creating Star Players to Develop a Stronger Customer Base

Employee training is not as simple as picking up a book, suggesting someone read the contents, and report back to you. It is an interactive process between the employee, the training team and management as a whole. The first step in developing a plan that will work for your company is assessing your needs. The bigger picture must be looked at and the question asked...will this benefit us and how? Once the needs are determined, get your management team on board.

With management's support, a continued interest in the courses offered and curriculum covered is easier to foster thus making the retention levels higher overall. To prove the effectiveness of the said training, you may want to implement a beta group as a testing ground. Allow the attendees to be a mix of both management and front line employees to get a wider view of the classes' effectiveness. The feedback obtained from such sessions is extremely valuable to the improvements deployed within the course. Finally, be certain to measure the results. After the initial test run has been made and the feedback changes and suggestions implemented, allow for a second batch of test subjects to experience the presentation. In this way, you can be certain you are achieving a return on your initial efforts.

Overall, the main thing to remember is that with a solid foundation, confidence is formed. Confidence in a product, confidence in a service, confidence in the knowledge and tools at their disposal all grow ten fold when proper training is received. Employee training can but a squeeze on a business financially at times making it harder to afford. The real question though...can you afford to not have it?

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online (http://www.sixsigmaonline.org) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.