Training is an essential part of integrating new employees at an organization (as well as helping current ones) and ensuring they will exhibit high performance. It is where new hires learn about their position as well as gain the required skills and knowledge to perform at the company. Trainings such as onboarding are crucial for maintaining employee engagement and decreasing turnover (Tsipursky). Poor training can lead to low performing employees who are much more likely to contemplate leaving the company, and can cost an organization a considerable amount of money (Tsipursky). Adequately trained employees are much more likely to stay at a company and be engaged at work (Tsipursky).
My Beneficial Training Experience
One training experience that I felt was very successful was during my onboarding at a construction company I interned with two summers ago. Although interns are only expected to work at the company for three months during the summer, they still go through the majority of the new-hire onboarding process for full-time employees. As we learned in the class lecture this week, onboarding is a major part of the new employee training process where employees learn about the organization such as the values and norms, and it is when formal socialization occurs. In my onboarding, I first found it useful that the recruiters maintained contact with me before my first day of onboarding, ensuring I had all of the information I needed and that I knew what to expect on my first day. This method is a form of anticipatory socialization that can make the onboarding process more effective. During the actual onboarding process, the company used a group approach where all new employees learned together, which I thought was helpful in allowing each new employee to socialize and get to know what other people at the company were like. The primary training method used was presentation, with lectures and PowerPoints that talked about company history, different departments within the company, benefits, and much more. Group-building was also implemented by having team activities and discussions, which helped us build relationships with others. One last beneficial feature of this training that I want to point out is that each training session was taught by a different manager from the company, including the COO and many department heads. Involving managers in the onboarding process, especially if it is the manager the employee will report to, can greatly increase the effectiveness of onboarding and provide new employees with valuable attention and support (Ellis). Having these managers play an active role in the training helped me personally by making me feel that I could easily approach each of them and ask them for help during my transition into my new position.
My Unfavorable Training Experience
One less beneficial training I have experienced occurred during a webinar I participated in during one of my construction internships. We learned in this week’s class lecture that webinars are a form of presentation training, used to convey facts or compare alternatives. This webinar was about a specific construction process and consisted of a one-hour presentation on the topic with little audience interaction. I found the presentation boring and not very useful. Our class lecture mentions the importance of creating a learning environment during trainings, which includes making the content meaningful and communicating the relevance of the training to the employee. I felt this training lacked relevance to my position as an intern, although it was construction related, which made me uninterested in the content. I also thought that the content during the entire hour of presentation was not very meaningful, and that a lot of time was spent talking about things unrelated to the webinar topic.
Trainings of all forms should be useful to employees and to the company, otherwise the company is wasting money and employees feel like they are wasting time. Successful training experiences can lead to happier employees who perform well and stay at a company for many years to come.
Citations:
Ellis, Allison et al. (2017). “Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly.” HBR, https://hbr.org/2017/06/your-new-hires-wont-succeed-unless-you-onboard-them-properly
Tsipursky, Gleb (2023). “A Guide to Onboarding New Hires (For First-Time Managers).” HBR, https://hbr.org/2023/07/a-guide-to-onboarding-new-hires-for-first-time-managers.
