How to Train New Employees? Best Practices and Tips

ompanies and organizations do pay significant attention to the training and development of their employees. Training new employees is no exception. Why miss a chance to engage employees and help their knowledge contribute to the company’s goals from the beginning?

Yes, new employee training does not end at the onboarding stage, and this article shows you why and how to train new employees so that it only adds to your business goals and culture. 

What is New Employee Training?

Training new employees contemplates the program or set of courses to integrate the new employees into the organization and provide important knowledge and skills related to the performance within their role.

In most cases, such training allows the new employee to have enough skills and knowledge to enter a new position in the company and perform their role effectively in a short time.

Sure, corporate trainers and L&D specialists can implement different types of programs for new hires, from specific online courses and hands-on training to onboarding and compliance training. Yet, you should differentiate onboarding and new employee training.   

Onboarding vs New employee training

Onboarding is a process allowing the integration of new employees into the organization in terms of company culture, policies, procedures, and team introduction within a short term, while new employee training is more specific training focusing on skills and expertise related to certain positions or roles. 

In reality, new hires often have both onboarding and specific training related to new employees’ job-related skills and expertise. In this regard, specific training can be a powerful extension of the onboarding process, focusing on continuous training and technical or soft skills.

That way, these types are pretty essential for new hires who join the new organization and can be used under a comprehensive new employee training program.

Read more: Onboarding Best Practices To Integrate New Hires

Benefits of New Employee Training  

Importantly, new employee training offers certain advantages to businesses and teams. What are they? 

• Skill advancement. First of all, new employee training aims to offer specific skills for a job or role, meaning it usually leads to better performance via enhancement of certain skills.
• Efficiency enhancement. Each company has its processes, while employee training allows new hires to understand the business, and internal framework, and effectively adapt to the existing system.
• Adherence to standards. For instance, compliance training helps to ensure that fewer mistakes and errors referring to legal or regulatory issues occur.
• Turnover reduction and engagement increase. New employee training helps to turn new hires into engaged employees bringing more confidence and showing perspectives for growth and continuous learning.

How to Train A New Employee? Key Steps and Tips

Developing an effective new employee training program is usually a comprehensive process that involves meticulous planning, proper communication, and solid organization. 

Yet, if you want to integrate the new hires and succeed, you should focus on training methods that will allow the new hires to remain engaged, link them to the corporate culture and procedures, and support feedback. 

Here is our small guide on how to train new employees effectively and make them an active part of the organization:

#1. Identify and Develop Key Procedures That a New Hire Should Know

The first critical thing to do is to identify key procedures that a new hire should know and operate with. It is crucial to integrate them into their role smoothly. There, you can start by mapping out core tasks and job responsibilities to enhance employees’ understanding of the skills that are expected. 

For a trainer, consideration of procedures should be a part of training curriculum development, aligning objectives to goals, and understanding new hires' needs. 

In particular, if you are hiring a new person for a customer service team, your procedures may include the operation of the CRM system, handling inquiries, and management of complaints. 

In terms of new employee training, you should organize and categorize procedures for further distribution. First, you identify specific processes and then can offer special guides, manuals, or activities related to protocols or essential procedures.

Tip. If you want your program to be effective, you can support procedures introduction with job shadowing and available documentation. 

#2. Determine the Team or Person That is Responsible for Training

When you offer a training program to new employees, it is important to determine who is responsible for onboarding and specific training. Why? It allows a more cohesive experience and more focus for the new hire. 

For instance, you may have HR specialists involved in the employee onboarding process. Yet, for specific new hire training, a person with enough experience and knowledge, like a manager or leading specialist, is required. 

Thus, you should have a team or person who will have enough expertise and experience not only to introduce to the company’s culture and processes but also to offer relevant information and share expertise regarding peculiarities. It can help trainers create an activity-rich and interesting training schedule to keep engagement high.

For a more effective new employee training experience, you the L&D department can team up with a hiring manager and recruiter to cover key integration processes, both job-specific and company-related.

Read more: How to create a training module?

#3. Pair a New Employee With an Experienced Colleague

Except for the people who help with procedures, policies, and skills, you can assign a buddy or a mentor to a new hire. It is a common practice within onboarding that allows setting connections with a team and reducing turnover. 

In well-developed companies, a new employee is likely to be paired with a more experienced specialist who can offer some guidance during the first weeks or even months. This connection allows a new hire to have a new source of knowledge, get more informal advice, avoid common mistakes, and set a reliable point for any inquiry 

It helps newcomers to get used to the new place and boosts morale significantly. Subject to Forbes, two-thirds of employees state that peers among existing employees have an important effect on their sense of connection. 

#4. Foster a Collaborative Learning Environment

One of the goals of new employee training programs is to integrate the learner into the organization. The best way to do so is via connection to the team, shared knowledge, and processes. And collaborative learning environment can significantly facilitate you with this. 

How? Creating a collaborative learning environment encourages knowledge sharing, peer interaction, and team cohesion. 

Thus, try to embed collaborative learning initiatives into the new employee training process. There, you can refer to:

• Peer review or training sessions (great for connecting with team members and getting used to critics)
• Group projects. (can be good for retention of crucial knowledge and knowledge sharing) 
• Cross-departmental workshops (necessary option if a new hire requires knowing specifics of other departments to perform their duties)

The goal of the trainer here is to encourage new hires to participate in team meetings, and brainstorming sessions, and ask questions in the community. With a collaborative learning environment, new employees will be able to continually learn from their colleagues, driving innovation and collective growth.

#5. Use the Tools That Allow Interactive Learning and Streamline Training Operations

Besides, one of the best tips for training new employees contemplates integrating learning or training technologies. In particular, you can incorporate software that affects the learning experience or helps you manage the processes.

Interesting fact. Accenture uses Metaverse for onboarding, resulting in outstanding post-onboarding surveys.

For instance, you can use special tools for the creation of interactive quizzes (Kahoot or Quizzlet) and simulations (Adobe Captivate). At the same time, you can resort to L&D tools for better expertise management and collaboration. Such knowledge-sharing software as Notion, Guru, or Nuclio are great for documenting and sharing data or developing online training libraries. 

Yet, if you want to both streamline the training processes and offer engaging programs, consider learning management platforms as a solution. They allow managing learners, gathering analytics, and creating interactive modules with media. 

Note. EducateMe is a flexible LMS with great content embedding options, easy course creation, and numerous integrations for collaboration and business operation, like Notion, Loom, Zoom, and Slack. 

#6. Set Clear Expectations and Guidelines

Next, it is vital to set clear expectations and guidelines in terms of the job and role of the new employees. The clarity can encourage the active participation of the newcomers.

What are the best practices for training new employees in this regard?

• Provide a detailed job description.
• Outline job responsibilities and performance expectations.
• Link new employee training plan objectives to them. 
• Share a plan for the onboarding and specific job-oriented training.
• Back it with a comprehensive guideline and employee training checklist.

A good example of how to set expectations for the first three months is a 30-60-90-day plan. It is one more method widely used in onboarding, showing the goals of training and the expectations for the new employee. 

Yet, it does not mean that corporate trainers can not use it for subsequent skill development or specific new employee training. 

Highlight; you should focus on guidelines to help them understand their goal, underline larger business goals, and set transparent expectations. 

#7. Create Materials That Captivate and Offer Value

Let’s return to the characteristics of an effective new-hire training program. It should be engaging, relevant, and captivating, right? 

Therefore, the training materials are extremely important, as they ensure that the employees get the relevant knowledge, learn new skills, and remain motivated.

In terms of the creation of training materials, you should use interactive and informative formats, including videos, infographics, and e-books. At the same time, interactive simulation for specific tasks can also be your instrument to transmit ideas.

Besides, incorporate real-life case studies, employee stories, and practical examples to make the content relevant and relatable.

Another recommendation for content production is to use tools that can help you with that. One can resort to presentation, authoring tools, or video platforms to produce interactive training materials.

Read more: How to create an interactive training program?

#8. Ensure That You Provide Feedback and Support

Lastly, continuous feedback and support are integral to any training program. Thus, think of implementing a solid feedback system that is convenient for you and the new hires. 

First, make sure that regular check-ins and performance reviews fit smoothly into the training plan for new employees or the learning process. For instance, you can create a community, channel, messenger, or group where the training manager and a new hire buddy will be open to any requests. At the same time, you can include a mechanism of constant feedback after each activity. 

As new employees have diverse needs, it is important to have flexible options before them and adjust to their training requests. For instance, specialists, who do not need much support, can find libraries with courses or knowledge bases more useful. Sure, coaching and mentoring are important, yet, it is important to offer freedom and flexibility for employees to progress at their own pace.

In the end, foster open communication and support but do not forget about collecting feedback to evaluate new hire training and job satisfaction.

Summary: Best Practices for Training New Employees

So, it is clear now that new employee training is essential for enhancing productivity, ensuring employee integration, and talent retention. Usually, it is a well-justified program that follows the onboarding process, allowing new employees to get specific job skills and knowledge. 

As a corporate trainer, you can resort to the following best practices and tips for training a new employee: 

• #1. Identify and develop key procedures
• #2. Determine a dedicated training team
• #3. Pair new hires with experienced colleagues
• #4. Foster a collaborative learning environment
• #5. Utilizing tools for interactive and impactful learning
• #6. Setting clear expectations
• #7. Creating captivating training materials
• #8. Ensuring continuous feedback and support

But do not forget that you can use an LMS to streamline and efficiently train new employees. 

EducateMe LMS is a platform offering flexible content creation, seamless integrations, and comprehensive management of training processes. If you are an L&D specialist or a corporate trainer looking for such a solution, book a demo to know more.