Training Solutions for Fast-Growing Companies
Companies that experience fast growth have a lot to be excited about. Their brand is growing, they’re becoming household names, providing solutions, and most importantly, their revenue is growing. However, you should never assume that fast-growing companies don’t exist without challenges.
One of the most common issues fast-growing companies have is finding solutions for their training programs. Fast growth often requires rapid changes to your organization. This makes hiring and onboarding difficult, especially when new positions are being created and things are being restructured to accommodate this growth.
It can also be difficult to handle the large influx of so many people. However, fast growth requires a lot of new help, and hiring in large quantities is often necessary. When your company grows, you need to bring on employees with more specific skill sets to continue to promote rapid growth.
Companies are constantly looking for solutions to help them find employees skilled enough to continue to drive growth and increase revenue. However, instead of looking for help from the outside, maybe there are solutions internally which can be solved with the right training programs.
When companies are first experiencing a boom of new growth, the most efficient solution is to use an LMS program to implement a standardized training program. This is the key to maintaining the continuity, values, and morals of your company culture while maintaining the same level of growth.
With the right lms, you can develop a standardized training course that implements the right strategies and teaches the skill sets needed to maintain your growth and values company-wide. Consider using the following strategies to create a standardized training program using your LMS.
Implement a Standardized Curriculum
For businesses to thrive during boom times, they need a firm understanding to implement a variety of different courses for their employees. By implementing standardized curriculums across all divisions, you will give your managers the confidence to hire employees based on industry knowledge as opposed to experience. The standardized curriculum is the foundation of any learning process.
Before the implementation of any LMS, train your entire team by creating a set of classes. Then, once the implementation is complete, make sure you test it thoroughly. Test each classroom individually and make sure every person who participates understands and follows the lesson. This is how you ensure that the material you’re creating for your LMS is efficient before adding it to the final version of your software.
Implement Incentives for Success
Once you put the proper incentives in place, you will make sure that employees are motivated to learn in the future. By providing incentives for management as well, you can guarantee that both employees and leaders are excited about what’s coming and look forward to learning, even if it is a mandatory training program.
The incentive for instructors and managers can vary from person to person. Sometimes, it could be something as simple as coffee to get everyone together to discuss your strategy after work. Other times it could be rewarding a great employee who participates in a module beyond his/her expected ability or job description.
You can provide bonus classes that offer additional material beyond your standardized modules using this model. Offer everyone who participates in continued learning a small reward, and recognize the top performers at the end of these bonus courses.
Provide Content
As mentioned above, you want to provide content that is relevant to business growth, specifically situations of standardized training and learning. The best way to accomplish this is to make sure that you provide all users with the tools they need to effectively navigate their training in ways that benefit the company as a whole.
For example, you could teach how to import information into a new user account and link it to previous projects. This type of exercise is designed to show the employees of the company the importance of connecting data with other forms of work previously done, helping them connect the dots in a new project.
When they can establish patterns and connections in a new project similar to what has been learned before, they can improve the likelihood of the project succeeding. This is a surefire way to drive growth and a backdoor shortcut that replaces intuition.
For example, a veteran in the business has the knowledge to predict when a project will work or won’t work. When you’re hiring new employees, they may not have this “intuition.” Teaching strategies like the one mentioned above can help standardize these skills across your company, helping to facilitate new growth and maintain it.
You want to implement some level of mobile usability. However, for the most mandatory classes that contain the core of your company values and strategy, these should be in-office in a classroom environment with the instructor.
However, making some content available on a mobile basis will reduce stress on instructors and allow employees more flexibility in attending these courses. You just need to ensure that the mobile element doesn’t become too flexible – when this happens, you’re taking some of the standardization out of your training program.
Finally, at the end of important modules, you need to make sure the tests or quizzes contain a benchmark level of knowledge that employees need to continue to help your company achieve its goals. You can make the content and training as engaging as you want, but if you don’t get a firm grasp on the skills employees have harnessed, you can’t be sure if maintaining your growth is sustainable.
While it’s true that many of the learning management systems and current trends are moving towards a non-standardized way of learning, this may not be the best option for fast-growing companies. Yes, many of the most successful companies are using a project-based environment with a lot of flexibility.
However, these are companies that have already proven themselves and are top contenders in their respective industries. When you’re growing, you want predictability and efficiency. Using standardized learning and training is the only way to maintain these patterns – otherwise, you’re taking a huge risk and gambling with your success.