As more companies start to organize trainings for their employees they become increasingly weary on how to make the most out of them. It means you have to choose the right people to train.
We’ve talked about how to pick the right type of training. We’ve also discussed how to make the most out of the training.
But that may be for nothing if you haven’t picked the right people. This doesn’t mean the obvious – train sales people how to sale better. It’s a bit more deep rooted than that.
Don’t neglect the people who lag behind
It means (once again) firstly clear defined goals. For that you need a clearly defined problem you need to solve. For example, a quarter of you developers is as twice as productive as everyone else combined. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are good and the rest aren’t.
But sometimes the management is more interested in investing in this smaller group for further trainings since they already have an edge over the rest. This means they know more so they can handle more, right? It’s wrong to build your operations only over a select group of people and leaving the rest to pick up the slack.
Instead, get together with those best performing people and ask them what they are doing. Analyze their performance and you will see why they are better than the rest. It might not necessarily be more knowledge. Maybe they are just better time and task managers? Or maybe they do know some great tricks to improve their work? It is this knowledge than then you should give to the rest to have them gain on the best performers.
Forster a new culture
Don’t worry, this won’t make the best performers jealous. You can still provide them with additional trainings. And they will be even more motivated since they will now have more colleagues that are on par with their skills. Hence, they will be able to work better as a team and achieve more. This should also ease personal watercooler gossip. No more “I do all the work while half of them just click buttons all day”. Better relations between the employees will lead to a better team and to more success for everyone.
So, training the right thing to the right people is very important. So much as deciding to hold the training in the first place. As always, the best way to define these goals is by communication with the team. Establish a company culture where open communication between the employees and the management is not only encouraged, but a core value.
After all, a while back Sheryl Sandberg said she and Mark Zuckerberg can say anything to each other. Absolutely anything and they do that on a daily basis. It all started when Sandberg first came to Facebook. She asked Zuckerberg to openly tell her any and all remarks he has about her work as she gets to grips with her new job. Zuckerberg replied he would love it if she would do the same for him. This became into a vital part of their daily work. Given the growth and success Facebook is having, this openness should have some role in it, right?