Hiring an employee is exciting. You’re finally getting the additional help you’ve probably needed for a while. Before doing anything, you should take a minute and celebrate taking this step. You rock! While bringing on an employee is exciting, a lot of time and effort is required to onboard them and get them up to speed where you really feel their impact. Training employees is key to having a productive relationship, and training them efficiently means you’ll get the help you need faster. To help you achieve this goal, here are our tips for how to efficiently train employees.
Get organized
Start by making a list of all of the tasks you need to train your new employee to do. Think through what tools, documents, and software you typically use to complete the work. How will your new hire access these resources? Where will they go to find answers or ask questions? What additional skillsets might they need to develop?
Are there other things you need to setup ahead of time to accommodate your new hire? For example, do you need additional licenses for any software? Do you need to create another email address? Are there HR-related items that you need to complete? Start making a list of these tasks so that you can complete them before your new hire starts.
Create project checklists and document workflows
It’s helpful to create project checklists and document workflows for recurring work that your new hire will handle. Think about onboarding new clients, setting up new matters, drafting simple documents like notice, and sending out invoices. Put together a checklist and workflow for each individual task or project so that your new hire knows exactly what to do – and you’ll know it’s done correctly.
For checklists, consider using a project management tool such as Asana, ClickUp, or Notion. Most of the free versions of these tools allow you to create checklist templates that can reuse each time a particular task needs to be completed for an individual client.
If it would be helpful to explain the work to be done by actually showing your new hire how to do it step-by-step, we recommend creating how-to guides using a tool such as Tango, which allows you to create how-to guides in seconds and can save a bunch of time training.
Communicate the why
If you want an employee to remember how to do something and repeat it, they will have a much better chance of doing so if you teach them why they need to do it. Once they understand why something is done the way that it is, it will be easier for them to commit it to memory, properly complete the work, and find greater meaning in their job.
Check-in frequently and foster feedback
Once you’ve established your training systems and rolled them out to your new employee, you don’t want to say good luck, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. Instead, you want to establish open lines of communication, check in with the new team member frequently, and foster a circle of feedback. Building in this process is especially important because you’ll need the feedback to assess what tweaks are needed to any checklists, how-to guides, or the system overall.
If you incorporate these four tips into your employee training process, you’ll not only save time ramping up your new team member, but you’ll also start reaping the financial benefits of your new hire sooner. Yet another reason to celebrate! If you want more ideas on how to build efficiencies into your practice, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll look no further than your inbox for additional practical tips that will help you optimize your practice for growth and enjoyment.
