Is your staff adequately trained?
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EmailEven if formally educated or certified, is your staff fully prepared to successfully do their jobs?
Does your staff have the adequate training to do their jobs? Do they all know how to use the equipment available to be most efficient and productive? Do they have in interest in on-going professional development and growth within their roles?
Some employers, as part of the interview screening process, may have candidates undergo job specific, pre-employment tests to illustrate their actual capacity. The article by Lisa Quast titled “Pre-Employment Testing: A Helpful Way For Companies To Screen Applicants” describes some of the pro’s and con’s inherent with pre-employment testing. Use of personality testing has also been employed in some instances to try to gauge the candidate’s potential to be successful. Nothing is 100 percent accurate, but screening and testing can give an employer a good baseline for use in choosing the candidate or candidates to offer the job. In all reality, the final decision boils down to the “gut feeling” of the interviewer.
Here are a few tips to help ensure your staff is prepared upon hire:
- Have someone assigned to meet the new employee on their first day to show them their workspace, introductions to coworkers and to answer any questions they may have. If no one is available to do this, consider postponement of the new hire’s first day.
- Orient/Onboard new employees in a timely manner.
- Provide and training specific to the organization and job in a timely manner.
- Ensure supervisors follow up with new hires to answer any questions, ensure training, onboarding, and acclamation is taking place efficiently. If not, it is critical that this be resolved swiftly.
By setting your employees up for success from the start, longer term commitment, efficiency and output can be reasonably expected. Sure, not everyone will work out, but by neglecting to proactively set them up to succeed , provide them with the proper equipment, training and follow-up, it can be near certain that failure will occur, which is detrimental to both the employee and employer.
Michigan State University Extension offers a variety of programs to provide expertise, education and development of communities throughout the state of Michigan.
