Grow, develop and flourish with Train the Trainer
Recruitment is a huge challenge right now. Finding the right people you need to complement your team is difficult. People’s needs and priorities have changed significantly in recent years, and many employers are still struggling to find people with skill-sets to match their requirements.
This means that, once you have found and on-boarded a new employee, it’s important to look after them well. Caring for new and existing employees’ training needs will gain their trust and build loyalty, just like with our customers. When employees are happy and engaged in their work, with opportunity to progress, the recruitment challenge fades away.
How to help people grow, develop and flourish
You’ve selected people for your team and organisation because they have the attitude, aptitude, perspective, behaviours and values you are looking for. So, to set them up for success and help them grow, as a leader you have a responsibility to support, guide and show your team the way. That may involve supporting them through mentoring, coaching, upskilling, training and development.
An upskilling story
A colleague joined my team to cover a period of maternity leave. She was brilliant - a wonderful asset to the team. She was so efficient, she always completed all her tasks and admin by the end of each day.
Our colleague returned from her maternity to a part-time role. This meant her maternity cover became permanent. I was thrilled! This person had clear potential. During her annual review and quarterly updates I suggested she learn my job. Initially she was reluctant as she lacked confidence.
After a couple of years of shadowing me and taking on extra responsibility (slowly and steadily), she was able to carry out all aspects of my role. I had effectively trained her up to do my job with a view to having time off with peace of mind and to progressing my career. When a promotion opportunity came up, I took it. My colleague was promoted into my old role and it was a smooth and easy transition for the team. To this day I think she was much better and more suited to my role than I was!
How I made this happen
The ability to train people well is a valuable skill. Yet so few people I meet possess this. Train the Trainer is a skill I gained early on in my career and it’s not only enabled me to progress my own career, but develop the careers of others. The rewards are off the scale!
At Zest for Life we’re pleased to offer Train the Trainer development to assist people who see the potential in others and want to pass on their skills and knowledge through learning a structured approach to training.
Train the Trainer is also an option within our Exceptional Service Makes Sense programme which many businesses have taken up and benefited from. Train the Trainer is ideal for employees with the drive to take ownership and lead the transformation of internal service delivery. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a team of Exceptional Service Experts working every day to improve service standards and passing on their skills and knowledge to new recruits. Imagine what the outcomes would be!
Train the Trainer - the reality
Offering Train the Trainer and other learning and development opportunities is a way to show respect and trust in your people, to build loyalty and look after them at work.
In reality what tends to happen is people are shown once or told once how to do something, then expected to have understood and to be confident performing the task thereafter. It’s not effective and it doesn’t work.
Think about it. How many times have you tried something once only to never do it again because you can’t remember the exact process or fear you might do it wrong?
I’d challenge anyone to successfully make a complex cocktail or fold a towel into the shape of a swan after only one attempt!
Benefits of Train the Trainer
Training and development is a commitment and can be a big investment of resources. So, why would an organisation consider introducing a Train the Trainer initiative? As I said earlier, the ability to train people effectively is such a valuable skill to have in your toolkit. Once learned, it can be applied to all kinds of work and life scenarios and at different stages of training.
Some of the key business benefits include:
Bringing training skills in house
Building belief, trust, engagement in your team
The ability to develop skills at different levels of the business
Improved productivity and capability in both trainer and trainees
Consistent standards of training delivery.
Take a look at our Additional Training page and my book Exceptional Service Makes Sense...Business Sense for more about the benefits.
Let’s talk Train the Trainer!
Are you convinced? If you’d like to learn more about our Train the Trainer provision, why not book a 30-minute discovery call with Sally to explore the possibilities.