Day 2

Other ways to formalize informal training are to recruit individuals to act as coaches or mentors within their work groups. These individual would have a sideline responsibility of being the go-to person for training needs in that department. They would also be charged with seeking out new knowledge or skills and imparting those to their fellow workers.

So often, on-the-job training is a version of “follow Joe around;” this means a new-hire is paired with a more senior person in the workplace who is tasked with showing them the ropes. Numerous negative ramifications can result from this approach. Skilled workers tend to forget the basics and often will concentrate on the how-to at the expense of the “here’s why.”

This results in a new-hire who does not have the ability to identify or react to anomalies because they only know how things should work. Additionally, if each new-hire is paired with a different “trainer,” each trainee will have a different learning experience, and learning outcome, simply because the trainer is left to his or her own devices to create the training content, process, and delivery. 

One way to make this process more efficient is to create checklists so that you can be somewhat assured that each trainer is covering all the same information and in the same order. For instance, the retail industry has a high-level of turnover as well as the propensity to hire clerks on an individual basis. A new-hire checklist would, at a minimum, ensure that new hires are trained methodically; first in floor layout and merchandise selection, then in cash-register operation and customer interface, and finally backroom operations and stock.