When training employees over software tools, it’s important to understand how to effectively train, when to train, and why it’s important.

Most companies offer training over software tools in a very generic/canned way. It’s typically through a Learning Management System (LMS), with a slide deck, a variety of acronyms, then a quiz. While this works for some companies, for others, there is no memory to recall the details of the training.

Effective training starts with planning and understanding the material thoroughly by the trainer. This is essential and crucial to understanding what you just read or saw. If the trainee isn’t engaged or loses focus, this can create ripples of negativity when users begin to use the software, and are unhappy because they were not able to retain the material needed to complete the steps. Ive seen these situations escalate quickly to the top leadership that the software isn’t intuitive, or effective, or is too difficult to use. This, costs money.

Training employees over software, especially custom or configured software needs to be completed in steps:

1. Once all configurations changes have been made, and go live is close.
2. Once the trainer(s) have been fully trained, and are extremely capable of answering any challenging questions that are asked.
3. Once a training Matrix (or other tracking tool) has been established to ensure effective rollout of training to all users (very important in a global rollout).

Step 1: Ensure all configuration changes are completed. This is crucial. If there still custom fields, settings, lookups, etc.. that have not been created yet, your training will be impacted, and questions from employees will come up. If you are using a standard SDLC process, and utilizing 3 systems (Development, QA, Production), make sure that the final promotion to Production has happened, or at QA and UAT has been completed.

Step 2: Ensure the trainers have been fully trained, and quite honestly, it’s helpful for the trainers to go through at least, components of the UAT process, so they have a deeper understanding of the system and the steps. If the software is phase driven, you can break these steps up for users, and train on the specific steps needed for the users to understand. This helps simplify the process.

Step 3: Building or utilizing some sort of tool to help with the training will go a long way. In the past, we have used matrices with the users, which steps they need to be trained on, date of completion for each step, and in some cases, for trainees who worked really well with the system and understood the process well, we brought them in as trainers. This can go a long way in getting buy in from the end users, when they see a colleague using the system effectively. It also can lift the new trainers thoughts on the software, which can help in Leadership or Steering Committee discussions.

Final steps that can add value would be creating Quick Reference Cards (QRC) that can hang or be mounted at various stations, if there is Manufacturing or Labs that need the information. Some users do not interact with the system enough to retain the steps easily, so QRC’s can be very effective.

Hopefully, some of these steps can add value to your training process. SCES Consulting provides full training services, including onsite, curated video training, and can be localized to a variety of languages. If you need us to host the software, not a problem. Your employees will have access from anywhere in the world. Need a quote or to discuss how we can help, please contact us today