5 Effective Ways to Train Employees on a New System
However, the other side of the coin is that organizations globally witness poor technology adoption rates. Now, why is that a problem? When organizations do not gain full potential of the new system, it translates into poor ROI. The new systems implemented, perhaps after much deliberation and with pomp and fervor, simply fail to deliver the expected value. Poor adoption becomes a barrier to successful transformation and fails on its promise and premise of delivering improved workflows.
Poor adoption or inefficient use of new systems has a high cost impact. While the most imminent and direct cost is the cost of system ownership itself, add to it the cost of customization, implementation and configuration, maintenance, support, and training, and that drives up the total costs of any new system implementation.
With such costs showing in your expense sheet, organizations not reaping the full potential of the transformation or change exacerbates total costs and spend. Consider the costs associated with under-optimal utilization of new systems, procedural errors, and inefficiencies evidenced as employees are on the learning curve. Some of this would be impossible to compute. So, if you add a notional cost, you’d arrive at a whopping cost of new system implementation. Ensuring the success of adoption, therefore, would be an organization’s obvious imperative. So, how to ensure better ROI?
Two key challenges or pitfalls organizations face in system adoption initiatives:
1. Lack of thought, structure, and investment in the adoption process.
Technology change is more than installing a software and expecting employees to embrace and internalize it – it’s a cultural change. Organizations often fail to give due cognizance to the ‘mental’ transformation that needs to occur. People are creatures of habits. Getting them to embrace new technology when they may be comfortable using existing methods requires careful and mindful planning.
2. Lack of adequate and appropriate training and support.
The rate of digital change is huge today. Whether it’s new systems or software, upgrades, or release cycles, digital change is inevitable and integrated in the way business is done today. There is a need for efficiency in proficiency – employees need to be proficient and quick to reap the most of digital initiatives. Organizations must seek to build a mindset of adoption as newer systems become the norm.
Here are five key strategies that can help build an effective system training program.
Any adoption goes hand in hand with a cultural and organizational transformation. Employees must get to see the bigger picture and understand business drivers – tell them how the technology can help them and the business at large. On-board your employees ‘culturally’ for the transformation journey well before you train them on the technology. Educate employees about the process and get an early buy-in to ensure readiness.
Leadership buy-in, mailers, events, leadership videos, and surveys are all excellent onboarding tools.
Time it right and build the momentum. Avoid the stress and frustration by making it a smooth and transparent process.
While software tools are getting more intuitive and user-friendly, and users today are digitally immersed and tech-savvy, a lot depends on the right training program.
Have a clear, holistic training plan and strategy and leadership buy-in at the outset. Use a structured, carefully-crafted design approach for your system or software training.
An effective software training is relevant and engaging.
Engaging Format: A 60-page manual, 3-hour classroom/virtual session, chatbot, coach, etc. will not make users look forward to the adoption journey. Adults learn best when they are engaged – they ‘see’ and practice. Use the tell-show-do approach. Increasing levels of immersion ensure learner engagement and improved retention.
Ensure modalities that allow viewing system demonstrations and provide ample practice opportunities. Practice modes can also be tracked to provide insightful analytics into system aspects that are clear to users and where users may face challenges. This can help charter efforts in the required direction.
The Forgetting Curve suggests that users forget 90% of what they learn within a month. So, time your training right – training employees a month in advance is likely to be a waste of effort.
Employees often seek champions, colleagues, or managers for help or look up the system Help section. This loss of collective productive time adds to delays and costs. The purpose of technology is to bring in efficiencies, but it achieves just the opposite in the absence of the right training. In-app training or just-in-time interventions with micro-learning modules work best. Keep the training contextual and specific; role- or function-based structure does not overburden users with information that they might not need. When structured in focused modules with clearly defined learning objectives, users can access the required training easily.
Effective training programs need to be continuous. Information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retrain. To ensure stickiness, a training plan should include interventions at regular intervals. Use strategies such as meet the SME/process champion, tests, videos, mailers, Q&A, and follow-up sessions. When placed correctly, these can be effective ways to reiterate and reinforce information.
With the constantly evolving technological advancements, it is essential for employees to continuously upskill themselves. The strategies mentioned above will help you build a training plan whereby you can effectively train your employees on new systems and applications.
application training, business application training, systems training