5 Types of Training Your Business Can’t Afford to Skip
by Mashum Mollah Management 19 January 2019
As a business owner or manager, training your team in several different areas will help you grow with a well-rounded, competent staff. Unfortunately, many businesses stick to the bare bones and basic requirements required by state and federal laws. To truly leverage the talents of your team, it’s important to train them across several different areas and maximize the potential for success. Here are five types of training your business can’t afford to skip:
Workplace Ethics:
Today, workplace ethics play a huge role in company culture. Unfortunately, far too many businesses have gotten into trouble due to harassment and other ethical issues. These are problems that could have been avoided if you instilled values into your team early on.
Work ethics aren’t just about how employees treat one another; it’s also about how your team carries about their responsibilities. For example, two characteristics in the work ethic realm are accountability and honestly. How does an employee intend to handle a bad or complex situation? And are they comfortable approaching management if something goes wrong? Conduct a work ethics training seminar or meeting that helps employees better understand what you expect of them, and what they can expect from you.
Customer Service Training:
No matter what position you’re hiring for, customer service training can do wonders for company morale. After all, you want everyone—no matter what their job description is—to know how to treat customers. Your staff is the first people that customers interact with. Proper training will result in improved customer service skills, a higher rate in customer satisfaction, and even bigger profits.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is a great example of how customer service should be implemented in an organization. According to the Amazon mission statement, “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
With that in mind, it’s important to note how Bezos approaches customer service at Amazon, which is known for high-quality customer service. First and foremost, even as a CEO, he becomes directly involved in the issues some of his customers are facing by spending time answering customer service emails himself. He also has every employee—no matter what department—spend two days managing the call center.
OSHA Training:
OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 created by Congress to ensure safe and healthy working conditions in the workplace. The premise behind the program was that no worker should have to choose between their personal health and their job. Overall, the program tackles serious health issues and insures that workers—particularly those in high-risk positions—don’t end up in bad condition. There are many different industries and positions that require their staff to be OSHA proficient. For example, if you worked in the dental industry, you could have your staff take OSHA training online to ensure your business stays compliant.
Onboarding Training:
A staff member’s first day on the job can be very overwhelming. Yet many management teams in industries merely pass out guidelines and information packets and leave the rest up to the staff to figure it out. And chances are, it will be a while before your employees get around to reading their employee handbooks front to back.
This is why appropriate onboarding training is so important in the workplace. In fact, an employee onboarding process could be critical to the success of your staff. This is the process of helping the company’s new hires adjust to the performance and social requirements of the jobs. Through the onboarding, staff will learn everything about what’s expected of them.
According to the Academy of Management Journal, the first 90 days are pivotal to building rapport with the management, co-workers, and company. And there’s a fundamental difference between training and onboarding. Training merely teaches staff to how to do something, while onboarding covers the entire scope of the process.
Health & Safety Training:
In addition to being OSHA compliant, you should go above and beyond with your health and safety training, regardless of your industry. For instance, although you might run a business that doesn’t necessarily require you to be OSHA compliant, you still want to have rules and procedures in place to prevent a workplace injury or sickness. Identify the needs of your business and the potential hazards the workplace might cause.
For example, if you run a restaurant, although you’re confident in your chef’s ability to cook, you’ll still have to demonstrate the safety procedures for using knives and other equipment. Additionally, even in traditional office buildings, your team should have a thorough understanding of where the fire exits are and how to respond in the event of an emergency.
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