New managers are often surprised to discover that providing training to employees is an important aspect of being a supervisor. When your job involves managing people – no matter the size of your team or department – training is an important key to supervisory success.
A manager’s responsibility for training sometimes involves actually teaching employees how to do things, while at other times it requires recognizing when training is necessary and ensuring that workers get the training that they need. Important tips to keep in mind include:
Recognize Your Training Responsibilities – Realize that making sure your employees are properly trained is an important part of your job – this is true for every supervisor, whether your company has a training department or not. To be an effective manager, you need to recognize that you are responsible for properly preparing each employee on your team for success.
Know What Your Employees Need to Know – The training you provide to employees needs to be focused on what team members need to know and be able to do in order to perform their jobs effectively. This includes not only specific skills, but also things like policies, procedures, teamwork, appropriate behaviors and more.
Learn How to Train Effectively – Telling employees what to do is not the same as providing training to them. Being able to train others is a skill that involves knowing how to convey information and instructions in a way that leads to transferable skills. Even if you aren’t actually teaching classes, as a manger you do need to know how to provide training to employees.
Adapt Training to Employee Styles – Not everyone learns in the same way. As a manager, it’s important to know how to effectively convey training to your team members based on individual differences, including variations in both learning preferences and personality style. For example, knowing team members' DiSC styles (as well as your own) can help you know how to adapt effectively to maximize employee performance.
Convey Relevance in Employee Training – It’s important for supervisors to let employees know why any training that they are going to receive will be beneficial to them. Whether employees are receiving internal or external training, it’s important for them to know what they can expect to learn and how it will benefit them in their jobs. Don’t focus on why it’s beneficial to the company – emphasize what’s in it for them!
Verify Mastery of Skills – The fact that employees have attended a training session does not necessarily mean that they will apply what they were trained on at work – but that’s what really matters with employee training. Managers need to verify that employees have mastered skills on which they have been trained and that their new abilities are reflected in their job performance. This involves observing performance, providing effective feedback, and more.
Develop Employee Skills on an Ongoing Basis – Employee training isn’t something that you can just mark off your to-do list and call it done. Ensuring that workers are properly prepared for success requires ongoing employee training. It’s important to constantly assess employee performance to identify areas where improvement might be needed so that appropriate training can be implemented.
Be the Best Manager You Can Be
While being an effective supervisor involves a lot more than ensuring that employees are properly trained, accepting and following through with your training responsibilities is an important aspect of supervisory success. Improving your abilities as a trainer can go a long way toward helping you become the best supervisor that it’s possible for you to be.