
Starting a new job and understanding the intricacies of your role can be tough. Employees develop the practical skills and knowledge required for their profession through proper on-the-job training and mentoring.
Hiring the correct, competent person for a position is only the first step in preparing them for success at work. They'll have to discover the ins and outs of your company's specific methods and processes firsthand.
On-the-job training is exactly what it sounds like learning how to do the job (or do it better) while already in the role. But there’s more to doing it properly so you don’t miss a beat. Plus, you can learn how to make an on-the-job plan using tools such as Visme.
In the article, we’ve listed what on-the-job training is, how it benefits your organization and the techniques you can use to implement this type of training. Plus, you can learn how to make an on-the-job plan easily using tools such as Visme.
On-the-job training is a hands-on training technique for learning new competencies and skills for a job in a genuine or nearly real working environment.
But it doesn't have to be the only option for employee training.
Many firms employ various training strategies to increase potential hires' pre-existing skills and knowledge. These methods differ depending on the work, the industry and the expense of picking a specific training approach.
However, they’re usually classified into two categories: on-the-job and off-the-job training. The latter focuses mostly on classroom learning approaches like projects, presentations, case studies and assignments.
OTJ stands for On-the-job training, where the focus is practical knowledge involving real-time tasks and building learning capacity through experiences. Some companies do this kind of training through job shadowing and hands-on experience.
However, blended forms of instruction involve activities such as reviewing written materials, watching videos or participating in industry-specific events and classrooms.
In most cases, everything is overseen by your team who's in charge of the training program. You're also required to provide comments based on the employee's performance. Employees learn about the manager's expectations for their role, how different types of equipment and software work and other hard skills required to complete their tasks.
When new employees shadow existing employees, they receive the most prominent kind of on-the-job training. After some time, they begin to carry out their responsibilities under the supervision of senior management. But how does on-the-job training really benefit employees who go through this process?
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On-the-job training helps employees get hands-on experience in scenarios that are similar to what they’d face daily.
A 2018 LinkedIn learning report stated that 94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. That’s a huge percentage to consider, showing the importance of properly integrating into a current role.
Other than that, there are a few other benefits of on the job training for the company and its employees.
With employees learning on the job from coworkers and managers, companies can save money by opting out of having pricey conferences or training sessions. Teaching also sharpens current employees' skills and turns their everyday activities into an opportunity to prepare new personnel to contribute to the workplace.
People quickly understand what they need to do and perform their jobs well. Traditional training can be time-consuming and employees wouldn’t remember much of what they learn. With OTJ training, employees understand exactly what their job entails and can ask any questions that occur while shadowing peers with on-the-job training. It lets people understand processes in your organization more quickly and effectively.
Employees who are unsure about their jobs add negativity and tension to the workplace. As a result, poor management and inefficiency prevail. According to the Society For Human Resources Management (SHRM), 69% of employees say that a great onboarding experience increases their likelihood of staying in a company for three years.
Many on-the-job training methods help individuals encounter their tasks in real-time and provide a detailed understanding of their employment. This reduces confusion and stress and helps employees do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
With on-the-job training, new employees immediately meet their new coworkers and feel like a part of the team. This allows new employees to feel comfortable enough to ask questions, even if their training is complete. Plus, trainees can enlighten themselves by learning more while also developing a focus on a common purpose.
Employees actually become more engaged if they believe they’re constantly learning and developing due to on-the-job training. But the process isn’t the same for everyone. It’s likely that depending on your role, you’ll receive different types of on-the-job training.
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On-the-job training can be an excellent alternative for some businesses and their employees. Plus, it allows them to develop relevant skill sets for their professions.
There are a couple of on the job training examples that can help you understand what it exactly encompasses.
An internship is a professional learning opportunity that provides practical work in a student's study area or career interest.
This is usually a larger collaborative effort between educational institutions and commercial firms. They’re widely sought after by students and recent grads. Interns continue to study regularly while also working in a factory or office to develop the practical knowledge and skills required for a job. It provides a professional environment for employees to learn and develop fundamental experience in their field of interest.
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Rather than focusing on employment, the job emphasizes career advancement. Work experience exposes students to a real-world working setting. Typically, after completing an internship, the company may offer the student a position as an employee.
An apprenticeship program is primarily designed for adult learners who want to earn money while learning on the job. This type of on-the-job training is frequently employed for highly skilled positions that require extensive practical training.
These training programs place trainees under the supervision of experienced professionals and are intended to provide students with advanced skills and knowledge. These apprentices are trainees who enroll in these programs and work for a period under a professional or a trainer.
This strategy entails assigning a mentor or supervisor to each employee who’ll train the person, resolve work-related concerns and provide performance feedback. An experienced staff member will walk an employee through a task. They will 'coach' or guide the employee(s) through learning by passing on their expertise and abilities.
Mentoring is another method of training new employees on the job. This entails having a staff member take the initiative in developing a new employee. The mentor will provide technical assistance and emotional support. This staff training benefits the new employee both professionally and in terms of teamwork. The mentor, on the other side, has the opportunity to hone their leadership and supervisory skills.
Both coaching and mentoring are effective ways to plan for succession in organizations.
Job rotation is a practice that involves moving a new hire between different roles inside a corporation. This is a successful training strategy because it provides the newbie with a deeper grasp of how the various components of the organization work together to create the end product or service that the firm provides.
This can also help the newcomer integrate into the workplace. Social learning is essential for employees to collaborate with others as a team.
Trainees might be reminded of prior systems they have learned while rotating at a different job, preventing them from forgetting what they have already learned. Your new employees will learn how to use these tools and how to do other jobs.
Job shadowing entails being a shadow-like companion of the person doing the work. The learner closely observes their trainer and understands the work to be done by doing so. This helps a newcomer understand what they’re expected to do and how to do them.
When one employee shadows another employee, they better understand how they execute their job. This is often for a limited time, such as a few days, weeks or months.
Even experienced employees can benefit from shadowing because it lets them acquire new techniques, improve their soft skills and see everything work-related in a fresh light.
You can't always hire trained staff or someone with the exact set of talents you need for a specific task. Even if you have found the right person for the job, you’ll need them to settle into their role right when they start. That is why on the job training methods are essential to gaining the precise abilities required for specific situations.
However, understanding the optimum training procedure for staff is critical. Otherwise, you may end up spending time with ineffective techniques.
While practicing the self-instructional approach, the individual learns and improves their skill through their own guidance and the support of various resources.
On-hand training offers an advantage over others. The learner gets to learn and improves their skills at their own pace, with no trainer interfering. Individual self-development programs broaden their knowledge and comprehension of numerous facets of their organization.
Also, share self-evaluation forms so your trainees can measure their progress.
In committee assignments, trainees must work as a group to solve an issue. This training strategy helps learners develop team spirit to attain a single corporate goal.
Trainees are expected to solve actual organizational challenges in committee assignments. To find and give a solution to the problem, all trainees must work together as one. This strategy also fosters a sense of team spirit among employees.
When carrying out job instructions, the person in charge explains each phase to the employee, allows them to perform and corrects them when they make mistakes. During this activity, the trainer creates an organized training regimen.
Along the way, employees perform the task according to their gained skills and if necessary, they can request feedback and reviews.
According to Research and Markets, the online education industry will be worth $350 Billion by 2025. The reason for this rapid growth of the market is learners figuring out what skills are emerging, what they can do to compete best in the global market. From a work perspective, e-learning is making it easier for employees to learn from anywhere.
An e-learning module doesn’t generally have an instructor and knowledge and information are communicated using various tools, such as the Internet. However, there are e-learning examples that do take place in real time, that too with an instructor.
To overcome geographical and time restrictions, an educator may self-initiate or facilitate such learning. However, it’s not suited to everyone, as some employees aren’t often tech proficient, so it may not be a viable alternative.
Building on the previous point, for those who aren’t as savvy with technology, blended learning training incorporates on-the-job training (offline learning) with online learning. It’s beneficial for businesses with super precise procedures and processes that employees must understand.
Along with hands-on experience, employees could spend the rest of their training time reviewing text materials, watching videos, visiting an industry event, or attending a class in person.
With the many types of OJT and their benefits, you can determine the best type of training for your personnel.
Making a well-rounded training plan may appear difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Implementing a planned on-the-job training strategy helps you and your organization maintain internal knowledge, increase employee engagement and retain top talent. Begin with the most important responsibilities and work your way down.
You can construct a roadmap for your employees with comprehensive training documentation.
A well-structured employee training plan will include a series of scheduled learning exercises to assist people with their individual roles and responsibilities. Before launching your program, do an audit of what the company and your employees require. Otherwise, you won’t achieve tangible results, no matter how much investments you make.
The best way to get started to is by creating your plans with Visme’s employee training templates. You can customize it to each employee and their learning needs.
You can make changes as you please or even provide feedback to employees or the members of the team. Visme allows you to collaborate with team members, write comments, resolve comments, and do other things. This means you don’t have to operate in a silo.
First, find employees who excel at their jobs and thoroughly understand them. Then, decide which of them would be good trainers, who’re eager to share their knowledge, have strong communication skills and are enthusiastic about training new staff.
You can also develop a pool of promotable personnel while recruiting and retaining higher-quality candidates who are more likely to remain loyal to your firm. Managers can also justify raises, promotions and lateral transfers after staff have completed specific training tailored to their career objectives.
After you discover your potential trainers, you'll need to train them so they can set objectives and expectations for new employees. They also need to explain and demonstrate how to complete each task for a job in detail.
Moreover, the trainer must have the skill to recognize the trainee's strengths and provide effective feedback for improvement. All in all, the person in charge of training new employees needs a ton of patience to get the trainee used to their new job.
You can hire third-party trainers if you don't have the resources to do in-house training. Tap from our rich template library to design training resources for your trainers.
Once the trainer has been prepared for the tasks, list everything you believe a new employee should know to do their job correctly. Prioritize things so they don’t become overwhelming. Share the list with them and refer to the list of prerequisites to assess their readiness as they go through their training session.
Moreover, you have to list down the jobs that must be completed regularly and the policies and procedures that staff must be aware of. Because this differs on a task-by-task basis, you must develop a plan and a list for each.
To make the OJT program successful, ensure the training is flexible enough to account for people's differences. The training should also consider what the new employee already knows. Plus, you must consider the various learning content that can engage your trainees.
Watch the video below to learn how you can revolutionize your learning design using Visme’s interactive capabilities.
However, if the job at hand is more fluid than repetitive, you’ll require a professional teacher as a trainer. It can be helped by practicing actual work or using simulations. Trainees can participate in role-playing, group activities or discuss relevant personal experiences.
An OJT trainer should also collect and prepare training materials and documentation to support the employee's learning experience. Finally, they should wrap everything up with a training schedule to keep everyone on track and make them aware of what they need to improve.
After designing a training program, you must examine whether it genuinely produces results. Consider what you want from your employees – what skills do you want them to acquire? And how are you going to know if they've grasped the material?
A trainee just needs to demonstrate, by example, that they are competent in a skill or set of skills required for the job. You can effectively determine what you want your employees to learn across all department levels if you create a set of skills in your on-the-job training programs. More importantly, you’ll build a method for successfully tracking the effectiveness of the training.
Employee outcomes, such as changes in knowledge, behavior and attitudes, should be measured and tracked. You can make use of the assessment checklist you created to assess how well your employee is doing in their training.
Recognize what your employee is doing well and provide feedback to help them develop abilities or competencies that can fall short of goals to keep them engaged and motivated.
Depending on the duration of the training, assessing the trainee's abilities may be required after studying a certain component of the profession.
Remember that on-the-job training ensures new employees have the knowledge and abilities to do their jobs independently. Use the Visme template below to review their performance review and identify opportunities for improvement.
Without any feedback, it’s also difficult to understand what’s working and what’s not. You’ll need to talk to the trainer and trainee to find that out alongside areas for improvement.
Creating a survey is a great way to gain insight into how your employee and the trainer are performing. You can use Visme forms to collect information from learners.
You're looking for an improvement in workplace culture that coincides with meeting company performance targets. Compare productivity markers before and after training to understand if they need more training. Then think about how you can help them be better trained.
Visme is a powerful tool that helps companies streamline their HR processes from recruitment to employee onboarding to training and increasing workplace productivity.
You can use it to help create professionally designed training materials in a single platform. There’s no need for extra coding or a graphic designer. You may have your training materials ready for whatever assignment comes your way with a few clicks.
A tool such as Visme can help create professionally designed training materials in a single platform. There’s no need for extra coding or a graphic designer. You may have your training materials ready for whatever assignment comes your way with a few clicks.
For example, you can construct an onboarding training journey for a community manager and automatically enroll new employees using Visme templates. To help your staff plan out the onboarding and other duties of the given role and allocate duties, Visme can help set up documentation so that employees can easily transition into their roles.
But there's more: many employees are visual learners. So incorporate visuals to help them understand and recall the information you offer. The Brand Design Wizard can instantly generate various templates that are customized with your company's typeface, colors and logo. You only have to enter your website address or URL onto the platform and let it do the rest, allowing you to integrate your brand identity seamlessly.
Visme allows you to create an overall development process incorporating competency models, development goals and feedback to guide on-the-job and off-the-job development initiatives. Utilize Visme’s project/program manager templates, for example, to demonstrate to your staff what specific actions they cover and the guidelines to follow.
You may create content, distribute it online and track performance and assets in your workplace. When your on the job training plan is ready, it’s only a matter of collaborating with your trainers to see whether what you’ve created is useful for the trainees. Their insights make it easier to deal with the tasks and challenges of a normal working day.
Aside from third-party integrations with your favorite platforms, Visme’s LMS lets you export xAPI and SCORM-compliant employee training and development materials.
What does a learning management system or LMS do? In the case of Visme, you must understand what SCORM is. It’s a format that can effectively distribute or upload training materials while maintaining the highest levels of interactivity and quality.
It can also help in tasks such as assessing learners’ progress, creating sequential training models for trainees to finish and so on.
With Visme's extensive library of professionally created templates, it’s easy to create successful training content that will keep your learners engaged and inspired.
On top of that, you can utilize Visme's AI-powered image generator to quickly access various images, art, 3D objects, icons and abstracts to highlight your company’s brand vision.
The success of an on-the-job training plan is mostly decided by whether the objectives and goals are met within the timeframes specified. However, numerous more variables might make or break such a training program. So, customize training methods to meet the specific needs of each employee, making them feel driven and valued.
On-the-job training takes many forms, ranging from rigorous and formal learning to unplanned training activities and goals. But it does provide an optimal training mix for companies and their personnel.
This increases employee productivity and morale and the general efficiency of the organization. On-the-job training provides tangible benefits to both companies and employees.
With Visme, you can save time by creating such plans. Employees can also use it after the session to refresh their knowledge or practice. Besides, your staff will know where to go before seeking more help and taking time away from another employee's tasks.
Finally, making it available to your target audience is just as easy. Whether it's an infographic, a presentation or a report, you can securely share your training plan with your team or whoever you’d like.
Now you’re ready to implement your on-the-job training strategy. Visme has everything you need to help your team streamline your training and development processes.
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