Workplace Communicator Blog

Announcing Free Report: How to Improve the Induction Timing of your Training

Time is precious.  In most companies finding the time to train and allowing staff time for training is problematic.  This new report provides key information on how to reduce induction training time and create flexible training that both improves training results, but also reduces training costs.

Melbourne, Australia – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new report “How to Improve the Timing of your Induction Training” to help safety, training and HR professionals get better results with their company inductions.

In many companies, time is precious.  And finding the time to train is problematic.  After all, how do you communicate all of the relevant issues to staff when time is limited?

Then, there is the issue of stressed out trainers constantly undertaking induction training on a daily basis.  Organisations often worry about how to make their induction training more interesting and ensure consistent high quality training.

In this free report you will find out:

• Three tips to reduce your induction training length.
• How to grab trainee attention.
• How to improve message retention and recall rates.
• How to systemize your training for improved training outcomes.

Inductions are an important process that done right results in will reduce the start up costs involved with learning a new job, reduce injuries, improve talent retention and productivity.

Discover how you can have an engaging induction process for your organistion that will be most cost effective than your current system.
For a complete copy of the report, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/improving-induction-timing/

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos and workplace training packages. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos.  For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross
Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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8 Essential Induction Tips for New Recruits

In this week's issue of BRW magazine, there is a helpful article called "It pays to be Nice" that offers companies insightful tips on how to usher new recruits into your company.

Jeanne-Vida Douglas interviewed me for the tips and to give readers extra information, here is some extra detail about how to design a great induction program (that didn't get printed).  Let's call it the director's cut.

Designing a Great Induction Program

Overall, a great induction program needs to be well thought out and planned right down to the daily induction tasks required during orientation over a 1-6 month period.  Those involved in inducting are thoroughly trained in all the right steps and can easily find all the induction materials required.  It should not differ from one industry to another as all these steps are crucial.  Important elements are:

1. Start inducting the new employee before they start their job.  Send a letter welcoming them to the company.  Let them know what is expected of them in their role and the steps involved with their induction process, so they know what to expect on their first day.
2. Make new starters feel welcome.  First impressions aren’t easy to erase.  Take them on a personalised tour of the company and introduce them to everyone.  Encourage other staff to be friendly to new workers.  Spend extra time introducing them to their new team members.  Assign them to a mentor or buddy.  The best inductors also have the CEO or other senior person take the new starter out to lunch in their first month.
3. Have their workspace ready.  This includes a desk, a computer with personalized logon information, telephone which will improve their ability to be productive.
4. All HR forms, policies and procedures are ready.  Administration tasks that are required by HR are ready to go and help is given to the new starter with filling this out.  Ideally, before they start their job new starters are told what information they need to bring in (eg: tax file numbers, bank account details etc).
5. Have their direct supervisor available.  Care is taken so that their direct supervisor is available on their first day to make them feel valued as an important addition to the team.   This is the same with the mentor or buddy.
6. Provide visually engaging induction training.  Avoid sitting the new starter down with a big, boring manual to read on their own.  The best induction training programs are structured and include a face to face component, vivid presentation techniques (photos, diagrams, videos and lots of colour), assessment and senior management involvement.  Ensure they are not overwhelmed with too much information.
7. Communicate company core values.  Great companies start aligning their core values and culture on the newbie from Day 1.  While part of the induction training and mentor/buddy effort, pains are made to get the new starter living and breathing company core values as quickly as possible.
8. Train the trainer: ensure that those involved in the process have been trained and know what is required of them.  Make sure they are able to communicate the company's core values and have the knowledge to answer questions.

What do you need to improve in your induction training program?

10 Ways to Improve your Induction Training

Inductions represent the most teachable moment companies have with new starters.  They are an ideal time to align staff and contractors with what your company stands for and how you like to do business.

Companies that fail to impress newbies risk losing them pretty quickly with research pointing to 25% of new starters deciding to leave their new company within the first week. This increases to 47% deciding to leave after three months with a poor induction process being blamed for those wishing to leave early.

First impressions aren't easy to erase.  So to harness the power of induction training, here are ten tips to consider including:

1. Use lots of visuals - avoid heavy text based training.    Educational researchers have found that 83% of human learning occurs visually.  Our right brain prefers visual information and can process pictures hundreds of times faster than the left brain can process words.  Use video, photos, diagrams and colour.
2. Tell stories - Stories and metaphors provide an emotional connection to information and can be an ideal when trying to get people to remember numbers.
3. Be Positive - Use positive language.  Tell people what they can do, rather than what they can't.
4. Involve senior management - Senior leaders drive the culture of the company.  They need to be seen and involved with induction training as a way of welcoming new starters.
5. Answer why questions - Too often companies teach staff how to do something but not why.  Company processes get perpetuated without people ever questioning why they need to do something.
6. Participative learning methods - Ensure training is active rather than passive.  Give demonstrations and get workers to have a go and coach them.     Ask learners questions that get them to relate to the training in terms of their own experiences.  Think of ways to involve all of the senses during training.   Avoid a lecturer telling people what to do.
7. Test - Using quizzes in induction training improves message recall and retention.
8. Communicate your Core Values - Great companies have staff that clearly know what the company does and does not do.  Spend a lot of time indoctrinating staff on your core values and culture.
9. The importance of safety - Poor inductions undervalue the importance of safety.  It's crucial to let new starters know from the outset how important safety is to the company.  Without this, a poor safety culture gets tolerated which ends up being difficult to change.  Make sure you inform new starters at inductions how important safety is to the company and why.
10. Standardize training - Induction training must be structured.  This ensures consistent, standardized training throughout the company.  Only if you have standardized training can you have a buddy system.  Otherwise, workers teach new starters bad habits and wildly different standards of training.

What can you do today to start improving your company induction training?

Digicast Featured on "Technology Behind Business"

Research shows that companies that have a learning culture are more profitable and productive than those that don't have one.

But faced with tight budgets, competitive pressures and diminishing time, many organisations under-invest in both learning and training.

John Kerrison, the host behind the Sky News Australia program "Technology Behind Business" posed this topic to a three person panel.  John wanted to find out, how important these areas are, common mistakes companies make and innovative ways training & learning solutions can be delivered.

The panel consisted of Karen van Druten from Strategic Human Resource Consulting, Marie-Claire Ross from Digicast Productions (and the writer of this blog), as well as Paul Hardwick from Seertech Solutions.

You can watch the 12 minute panel interview by clicking here.

How a great induction process makes a great company

Getting the right people into your company and training them properly is crucial for the success of any company.

There are so many reasons why inducting is so important.  Reasons include:

• 25% of new starters make the decision to stay in a company in their first week
• 47% of employee turnover occurs within the first 90 days of employment (with 60% of respondents citing induction as a priority area of improvement within the company, Recruitment Solutions 2007).
• The quicker that new hires are trained the quicker the return to your bottom line (let's not forget the expense of hiring a newbie, training them and waiting for them to get productive).  Companies that do this right get a 60% reduction to their "time to productivity rates".

So what's a great induction process?

1. Be friendly and welcoming.
2. Have training materials that treat the new starter like a valuable friend.  Use lots and lots of visuals to train people better.
3. Have senior management explaining the values of the company, what the company goals are, what the safety goals are, and how the new starter fits into the scheme of things.  Tell stories to make your values memorable.
4. Have face to face training, but also use training videos to further explain processes that will convey much more information than just words and pictures alone.
5. Test the newcomer on their knowledge.
6. Be friendly and welcoming and do include a meet and greet early in the process (I know I've mentioned this twice, but it is really important).
7. Make it fun!

By improving your induction process, you will not only reduce your recruitment and training costs, but improve the duration people will stay at your company.  Oh, and they will also want to work at your company and tell all their friends how wonderful you are.

Inducting people from a training perspective

When it comes to inducting people from a training perspective into any organisation, as important as this process is, unfortunately far too often not enough thought or preparation goes into it.

Organisations can become obsessed with running induction/orientation programs (with these terms often misinterpreted as being one and the same) on a new employee’s first day. Now I am certainly not saying that being given an OH&S overview or understanding the organisation’s mission statement isn’t important. But what about a true induction – and I am not referring to systems or database training, being allocated a new e-mail account, shown where the biscuits are, or being added to the kitchen roster.

These days it is not uncommon for people to move not only from one job to another, but also from one industry to another. And these people need to experience an in-depth induction, which can often go for an entire week.  But for someone new to both the organisation and the industry, when is the best time for them to be inducted?

From my own experience as a manager and having often hired people from outside my sector, I am a firm believer in having them sit within the business for at least 3 – 4 weeks observing the other staff, shadowing the experts, and getting an insight into the true goings on of the business.

After about a month, I think this is then the best time for them to be formally inducted (either by a facilitator from the within the business or an external expert). However the key word here is formally. Not just sitting at a desk, but being in a classroom environment – experiencing industry-specific training as well as performance support, role-plays and true simulations.

By waiting the month, new staff will have become more familiar with industry lingo, they will have watched their more experienced colleagues in action, and that way what is covered in the formal induction will actually make far more sense and be less likely to result in information overload.

Paul Slezak is our guest author this week who is the Director and Head of Learning and Development for Recruitment Academy – www.recruitmentacademy.com.au, one of Australia’s leading providers of induction, training, and consulting solutions to the recruitment industry.

Do you make these mistakes in your workplace safety communications?

Effective communication is vital to get staff and contractors aligned and working towards a positive safety culture.

Yet, just providing training to work safely is not always enough.   How we communicate about safety influences whether or not people will accept or reject our safety messages.

A lot of companies produce training about a particular safety topic or  communicate awareness with lacklustre results.

We have found that the following issues often let safety communication down:

1. Infrequent safety message reminders - Multiple message placements are the key to getting staff to remember new safety messages.  Try and get workers to engage in your safety messages in different formats (such as watching it, hearing it and reading it).  People learn in a variety of ways, so an effective safety campaign needs to use a variety of communication methods.  Messages need to be distributed in multiple ways and multiple times. Workers will need six or more separate exposures to your message to remember.  Use video, newsletters, posters, meetings, events and training sessions.  The more the better.
2. Messages aren't credible - Senior management play an integral leadership role in establishing the culture of a company including safety.  Effective safety leadership needs to be led and driven from the top.  Staff look at senior leaders actions to see whether new safety messages are being taken seriously.  Are your senior leaders really supporting the new messages or are they just playing lip service?
3. Messages aren't consistent - Good safety communication campaigns have alignment with all departments who are all working towards the same outcome.  This means working with all departments before you launch your safety messages and ensure that they will work with you and not against you.  A common example is that the production manager will push for speed, while the safety manager will tell people to work safely and cautiously.
4. Overuse of negative language - When writing your safety messages, it is important that positive language is used that focuses on the behaviour you want and not the behaviour you want to avoid.  It also needs to communicate the issue in friendly language rather than rule-based or blame-centric writing.  You will get little traction of your message if you blame workers for the current state of affairs.
5. Lack of consequences - It is important to introduce the new safety initiative by first explaining to everyone what the current problem is and the issues it is causing.  Then, managers need to explain the new rules of the game and the expectations.  It is also really important to let workers know of the consequences of not following the new guidelines.  This means letting staff really understand that poor safety behaviour not only puts themselves at risk, but the safety of other workers.  Let them know the effect this will have on their personal life and their family.

Of course, there are a lot more mistakes, but these are the main ones.

What can you do to improve your safety communication?

How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages Campaign (Part 2)

As mentioned in " How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages  Campaign" Part 1, marketing is the key to getting your safety messages heard and understood.

But how does the ordinary safety professional instigate a marketing campaign to educate staff about safety initiatives?

Let's do some Marketing 101 lessons, to look at the steps you need to undertake to deliver your marketing (oops, safety) strategy.

1. Who is your audience? You need to work out who your target audience is and their demographics.  Are they mainly males 35 - 55 years?  Or a combination of both males and females, but aged 15 - 25 years?  By working out exactly who your audience is, you can better work out the types of communication they are more likely to watch, read and hear.
2. What are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve?  How can you measure the success of the communication program?  What data can you measure both before and after the launch of the new safety campaign?
3. What is your message? What is it that you want to say?  If it is to raise awareness about safe forklift driving, why do you need to let people know about this.  Ensure that you let people  know what the safety initiative is and why it is important.  How can you ensure all departments have the same consistent message?
4. What communication methods can you use? Ideally, use multiple types of communication and deliver it multiple times.  Put together a strategy as to how you can communicate the same safety messages daily, weekly or monthly.

Let's take a look at an example.

Gypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA) needed a manual handling training program to train 3,000 workers from five different companies on how to handle plasterboard safely.  In the plasterboard industry, manual handling injuries are the most common of injuries.

The training program was treated as a marketing exercise.  An iconic plasterboard man was designed who featured on all of the communication.  A slogan was also created "Move it - The GBMA Way".  Both the iconic man and the slogan were a way of reminding workers on a daily basis about the training they had received.  Training centred around a 20 minute training video that also included medical animations to show how the back works.  A trainer's manual, PowerPoint Slides and employee handbook were used for training.  The employee handbook was A6 size to encourage workers to keep in pockets or lockers for easy reference.  Posters were also designed with the same theme as a daily reminder.

"The training material components were key in engaging roles such as Team Leaders to deliver the training to their teams effectively.   One of the keys to getting engagement with the safety messages on a daily basis has been the handbooks and posters to prompt training information.".  Gerard Crosswell, GIB NZ

Effective safety communication needs to be very specific to your organisation and tailored to your workplace demographics and culture.

It must integrate with a company’s day to day activities and be of value to the workers watching it.  Slick communication materials are not the answer.

Care needs to be taken so that communication materials are credible and easy to understand.

But more importantly, any safety communication needs to provide daily reminders to staff while they work, for the best results.

How can you best communicate your new safety initiatives?

Announcing New Training Video Best Practice Guide

It’s smart for companies to be worried about staff training videos and how to tackle them correctly.  There are so many choices.  Quite frequently, training videos are produced that just don’t get used.  Now, working out what components to include in your training video just got easier.

Melbourne, Australia (August 26, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a training video production house, today released the “Best Practice Guide: How to Produce Staff Training Videos that get Results”.   Developing the right training video for your company isn't easy.   This guide is a useful resource for anyone involved in the challenging and complex task of producing a company training video that performs.

In this 4 page guide, discover:

• The key components required for the best induction training program
• The causes of a poor performing training video
• Issues to avoid during the production of a training video

This guide is suitable for anyone wishing to produce a company training video that will be used for many years.  It is a companion guide for the Training Video Buyer's Kit.

For a complete copy of the kit, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/best-practice-guide-to-training-videos

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos.  Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos. For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions

+ 61 3 9696-4400

mc@digicast.com.au

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How Using Quizzes in Induction Training Improves New Starter Learning

Induction training is absolutely vital for new employees.   It is also the time when new starters are thirsty to know more about their new workplace and want to quickly integrate into their new team.   However, it can be difficult to know how well a new starter or contractor has absorbed training information.

Establish an induction training evaluation system

According to Joe Huang from Wondershare, makers of the Quiz Creator, as with any type of training, it is important to review and seek feedback before, after and during induction training.  The evaluation of induction training can be divided into three stages:

1. Evaluating new employees’ learning and academic performance. Before new employees start with you, you can quiz them on their knowledge.  This can be determined through examinations: paper-based tests are usually the most common way, but for the sake of time-saving and cost-effective, computer-based tests are the best choice.
2. Evaluating the appropriateness of the training course content.  For companies who are not sure about the content in their training and how new employees feel about it, you can quiz new starters to find out how they found the training and what they liked/disliked.  This is a great way to update your training in a meaningful way.
3. Evaluating the work performance of trainees.  After the newbie has started, you can quiz  supervisors on certain learning outcomes, to find out what they think of the performance of the new starter, so  you can know how the new employees took their training into practice.  This is also important information when reviewing your induction training and what areas need further improvement.

How quizzes can be used with induction training video for optimal results

Research has found that viewers of a training video score better on message retention and recall levels when they are told that they will be tested.

To use quizzes properly with a training video:

1. Quiz your learners before producing the training video. By finding out what information current staff have difficulty with, you will be more knowledgeable about the type of information to put into your training video.
2. Quiz your learners after (or during) the video training. This makes sure they have absorbed the information.
3. Use a quiz as a review tool. This is a great way to refresh staff.  Even if they only watch a small segment of an induction training video (for example: warm up exercises, by undertaking a small quiz on this topic, you know that they have learnt the information).

Now, while it is all well and good to test people during induction training, we hear from many companies that this sort of e-learning approach can be flawed.  All it takes is for a dodgy supervisor to hand people the answers and everyone passes through the quiz in flying colours.

That's why it is important when testing people that if they get it wrong, they have to go back to that section and watch the video again.  Or alternatively, the questions are randomly displayed so that it makes cheating much harder.

According to Joe Huang, it is important to choose a quiz creating software that has anti-cheating features.  This includes a time limit (so that there is no time to research answers), randomization (questions occur in different order), access control (password only access to change the test) and a concealed XML file (this stops the answers from being viewed).