The Retention Remedy

With today's labor market, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find trained employees. Most trained employees are holding out for higher wages. By them holding out for those higher wages, it puts more pressure on business owners to have proper training plans ready so that they can successfully bring in an untrained employee. This is true across multiple industries. The labor market has never been more tight.

Before we move on, what does your training plan look like?

For most people, training is nonexistent and apprenticeships aren't developed out properly. If you find yourself in this bucket of people, don't feel bad. This typically leads to frustration and resentment in your new employee that you worked so hard to find. Most employers and managers feel that they are great teachers and think that their employees are these perfect sponges that soak up absolutely everything they think they are teaching.  The communication gap between new employees and the managers in charge of bringing them up to speed is so vast in some companies. This can be attributed to two main causes. The first is that, just because someone has knowledge, doesn't necessarily mean they have the ability to communicate that knowledge through teaching. Second, some people don't know why what they’re teaching is even important.

Knowing what the two biggest disconnects in employee training are - how do we fix them?

If you find that these issues are affecting you and your company, you need to take the time to map out the defining characteristics of an effective employee. If a new hire didn't have any experience whatsoever for the work you were hiring them to do, what should be the first thing they learn that will instantly make them 10x better? From there, build off of that skill in the same way: what is the second skill that would make them even more valuable as an employee and so forth. Use this repeating question to develop a training map that will take any new hire from zero to a great employee and, better yet, a great leader.

Wonderful! You now have a training map! Unfortunately, you can have the best training map in the world but it still might not be as effective as you’d like it to be. This current generation seems to be looking for a little something more to feed their daily fire. Millennials and younger love coaching, mentorship, and self-betterment. Sadly, this is something lacking in most companies. When this is what so much of the entry-level working force is looking for these days, companies not putting as much effort into leadership as the new generation is requiring is a real issue.

Because it is hard to keep them focused in a classroom training session, take the time to mentor them in their lives and create situational-based training. This extra step is essential for developing well-informed and confident employees. Having these super-equipped employees, no matter the field will end up bettering your over-all business as well.

What does that look like? This idea of having incorporating mentorship in with the essential skills any new employee should learn. Well if you have your training map outlined, a new hire should first go through and complete it. When it comes time to introduce the mentorship and leadership coaching, start by answering the following question, “What do you know now that changed your life that your employees more than likely don't know?” The answer isn’t always job-related; sometimes it’s life-related. Once you have a list of answers to that question, turn them into a systematized training plan of their own. Executing the mentorship training plan could be as simple as, with each 30 day review, they also have to read a specific book that completely changed your outlook on getting tasks done. The sky’s the limit! The end goal is to simply make them confident. Make them confident, not only in their work but also in their ability to make wise life decisions.

We could spend hours on training plans and employee development programs, but the biggest thing to take away from today's Tidbit is that, if you want better retention in 2021, you need to map out a path to success for each employee. Not just for their job, but for their life too.

Thanks,