We spend a lot of time talking about how to hire talent, but today we’d like to focus on how you turn your top draft pick into a true star worker. The best part? We’re going to show you how you can leverage various technology programs and systems to track progress, highlight strengths and weaknesses, and even help employees acquire new skills.
Taking training online
When it comes to making sure your employees are set up for success, so much boils down to your training. Specifically, data show that up to 40 percent of employees leave a new job within a year if they feel that the training is inadequate. Studies suggest losing an employee can cost six to nine months of their salary, this type of quick turnover can take a real toll on your bottom line. By comparison, providing training and growth opportunities helps drive engagement which in turn leads to higher job satisfaction, better productivity and improved retention.
One of the biggest perks of the pandemic is that we learned that so much of what we previously thought had to be done in-person can be just as successful when handled remotely. In fact, training developers are increasingly tinkering with apps that make training and learning opportunities readily available through cell phone apps so that workers can truly access information online, from anywhere, and at their own pace. This system gives employees the flexibility that they crave, as well as gives them some autonomy over how and at what rate they accomplish their required training.
Learning management systems
When you have employees doing their training on their own, without a schedule, it will become increasingly important for your business to have a sound method to track participation. Luckily, technology has come far in this area, with many businesses abandoning the paper log or tracking on an excel spreadsheet in favor of a learning management system (LMS). At baseline, these systems manage the implementation schedule of employee training so that you can easily reference who has completed which training, when they were completed, and when the training must be renewed. However, certain systems can also track engagement in the various program offerings, helping you to isolate which trainings are holding the attention of your employees and which may need to be revamped in order to better meet the needs of your staff.
Beyond keeping you apprised of which employees have tackled their training to-do list, tracking training can help you better understand skills gaps within your workforce and help you to prioritize specific programs and learning opportunities. In addition, learning management systems can be leveraged to provide you a skills checklist of sorts that can identify folks who may be due for a promotion or fit a job opening that you might not have otherwise considered. And finally, if you work in a well-regulated industry, tracking certifications and program completions can help you to stay in compliance — or pull the data quickly should you ever be audited by a regulatory body.
People analytics
Sure, it has the whiff of “big brother,” but tracking employee productivity isn’t always nefarious! By tracking how employees divide their day, you can better understand which projects take up the bulk of their time and ensure that you’re providing adequate resources in these areas in terms of staffing and attention in order to achieve long-term business goals. Further, if you find that a particular task is taking more time than you had anticipated, you can do a deep dive on what is stalling progress and provide training or upskilling in these areas to make these previously lengthy tasks more time appropriate. Post-implementation of your fixes, you can monitor whether the changes have been effective and whether more guidance or teaching is necessary for a particular area to make informed decisions about the next steps required to best meet your goals.
Beyond looking at performance metrics, you can also use analytics software to track the employee experience. While employee engagement could be thought of as the end goal, the employee experience captures what employees observe, feel, and interact with as part of their company. By polling workers on their experience, you can identify areas of your business that may need attention to ultimately boost engagement, which we know correlates with increased dedication to professional development and interest in climbing the corporate ladder.
Automated review systems
When you want to keep tabs on that employee growth, the easiest way is using an automated review system. These programs, which are available from a number of vendors, automate the tedious task of annual, semi-annual, and even quarterly reviews by providing a space for employees and managers to input data on performance, not just at review time but throughout the year so that the actual review itself is more effective. In addition, the system can send prompts to all involved parties to remind them of what they need to do to complete their portion of the review, eliminating the need for HR to chase people down, and the results can be reviewed automatically by HR and finance so that pay bumps and promotions can be implemented seamlessly.
Employees, meanwhile, can enjoy greater visibility around their work performance, which in turn fosters engagement. In having reviews accessible 24-7, employees can refer to previous goals and areas of improvement and address them in their future work endeavors. This can prove particularly helpful when it comes to crafting self-reviews, with the employee able to provide more targeted examples of what they have done to grow and mature in their role and provide examples of why they may be eligible for an expansion of their role or promotion.
How are you using technology to track your employee’s progress?
