Top 10 Ways to Improve Employee Efficiency

As daylight savings approaches, it’s a good time to think about different ways you can, well, save time. These days, employees are spending more and more time at the office–certainly exceeding the typical 40-hour work week. However, increasing hours worked does not necessarily translate to increased efficiency.

So, how can leaders and managers improve employee productivity while still saving time? Here are the top 10 things you can do to increase employee efficiency at the office:

1. Don’t be Afraid to Delegate

While this tip might seem the most obvious, it is often the most difficult to put into practice. We get it–your company is your baby, so you want to have a direct hand in everything that goes on with it. While there is nothing wrong with prioritizing quality (it is what makes a business successful, after all), checking over every small detail yourself rather than delegating can waste everyone’s valuable time.

Instead, give responsibilities to qualified employees, and trust that they will perform the tasks well. This gives your employees the opportunity to gain skills and leadership experience that will ultimately benefit your company. You hired them for a reason, now give them a chance to prove you right.

2. Match Tasks to Skills

Knowing your employees’ skills and behavioral styles is essential for maximizing efficiency. For example, an extroverted, creative, out-of-the-box thinker is probably a great person to pitch ideas to clients. However, they might struggle if they are given a more rule-intensive, detail-oriented task.

Asking your employees to be great at everything just isn’t efficient–instead, before giving an employee an assignment, ask yourself: is this the person best suited to perform this task? If not, find someone else whose skills and styles match your needs.

3. Communicate Effectively

Every manager knows that communication is the key to a productive workforce. Technology has allowed us to contact each other with the mere click of a button (or should we say, tap of a touch screen)–this naturally means that current communication methods are as efficient as possible, right? Not necessarily. A McKinsey study found that emails can take up nearly 28% of an employee’s time. In fact, email was revealed to be the second most time-consuming activity for workers (after their job-specific tasks).

Instead of relying solely on email, try social networking tools (such as Slack) designed for even quicker team communication. You can also encourage your employees to occasionally adopt a more antiquated form of contact…voice-to-voice communication. Having a quick meeting or phone call can settle a matter that might have taken hours of back-and-forth emails.

4. Keep Goals Clear & Focused

You can’t expect employees to be efficient if they don’t have a focused goal to aim for. If a goal is not clearly defined and actually achievable, employees will be less productive. So, try to make sure employees’ assignments are as clear and narrow as possible. Let them know exactly what you expect of them, and tell them specifically what impact this assignment will have.

One way to do this is to make sure your goals are “SMART” – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Before assigning an employee a task, ask yourself if it fits each of these requirements. If not, ask yourself how the task can be tweaked to help your workers stay focused and efficient.

5. Incentivize Employees

One of the best ways to encourage employees to be more efficient is to actually give them a reason to do so. Recognizing your workers for a job well done will make them feel appreciated and encourage them to continue increasing their productivity.

When deciding how to reward efficient employees, make sure you take into account their individual needs or preferences. For example, one employee might appreciate public recognition, while another would prefer a private “thank you.” In addition to simple words of gratitude, here are a few incentives you can try:

• PTO: Instead of a bonus or raise, you can offer your employees additional paid time off without having to use their vacation or sick time.
• Take Them Out For a Meal: You can take the team out to lunch, dinner, or happy hour. Maybe even allow them to leave work early to do so.
• Send a Handwritten Note: Sending a handwritten note shows you recognize the great work your employees have done and that you care enough to put your own personal time into thanking them.
• Lazy Monday Coupons: Another option is a “Lazy Monday” coupon, which allows employees to arrive late on a Monday morning.
• Tell Your Boss: If you email the team or team member thanking them for their work, considering copying YOUR boss on the email.
• Consider implementing a workplace wellness program to cut down on the number of sick days and reduce your company’s overall health insurance spend.

6. Cut Out the Excess

If possible, try not to give employees smaller, unnecessary tasks when they are focused on a larger goal. Take a look at the team’s routine, and see if there is anything that you can cut to give employees more time to focus on higher-priority assignments.

For example, if employees are asking to write daily reports for their supervisors, but supervisors generally don’t have time to read them, consider cutting the report requirement. Doing something simply as a formality is wasting valuable time that could be used for accomplishing goals that actually help your company.

7. Train and Develop Employees

Reducing training, or cutting it all together, might seem like a good way to save company time and money (learning on the job is said to be an effective way to train, after all). However, this could ultimately backfire. Forcing employees to learn their jobs on the fly can be extremely inefficient. So, instead of having workers haphazardly trying to accomplish a task with zero guidance, take the extra day to teach them the necessary skills to do their job. This way, they can set about accomplishing their tasks on their own, and your time won’t be wasted down the road answering simple questions or correcting errors.

Past their original training, encourage continued employee development. Helping them expand their skillsets will build a much more advanced workforce, which will benefit your company in the long run. There are a number of ways you can support employee development: individual coaching, workshops, courses, seminars, shadowing or mentoring, or even just increasing their responsibilities. Offering these opportunities will give employees additional skills that allow them to improve their efficiency and productivity.

8. Embrace Telecommuting

Allowing your employees to work from home might seem inefficient – after all, how can you guarantee that they will still be productive if no one is watching them? However, the reality is quite the opposite (in fact, studies showthat people who work from home are 13% more productive than office employees). Letting your employees telecommute will allow them to save time that would otherwise be wasted completely.

For example, say an employee is feeling too ill to come in to work (or is simply worried about getting their coworkers sick) but can still be productive. If you don’t allow them to work from home, they will be forced to take a sick day and skip working all together. Or, forcing your employee to miss an entire day of work if they have to wait for that 2-4 hour period to get their refrigerator fixed, simply isn’t efficient. Instead, allow your employee to work from home so they can maximize what time they do have available.

9. Give Each Other Feedback

There is no hope of increasing employee efficiency if they don’t know they’re being inefficient in the first place. This is why performance reviews are essential – measure your employees’ performance, then hold individual meetings to let them know where they are excelling, and what areas they need to work on.

Increasing employee efficiency isn’t all about what they can do better – some of the responsibility falls on you as well. But just like your employees, you aren’t psychic. So after reviewing your employees, ask them what you could do to help them improve. Maybe they would like a little more guidance on certain tasks, or would prefer a little more room for creative freedom. Asking for feedback not only gives you clear, immediate ways to help your employees improve, but also encourages a culture of open dialogue that will allow for continued development over time.

10. Think Big Picture

Things that might seem like an inefficient use of time to you now, might actually be to your advantage in the long run. So, before vetoing an apparent misuse of time, ask yourself how this could possibly benefit your company.

Investing in HR software now can save your company – and your employees – countless hours down the road. From automated onboarding to payroll that runs itself, embracing HRIS technology will improve efficiency, reduce frustration, and help your business grow.

By utilizing a number of our efficiency tips, you can be sure that you don’t fall behind and put that extra hour to good, productive use.

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HOW TO IMPROVE EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE – IMPROVING IS EASY

We can talk about training forever, but in the end, improving employee performance remains the goal.

Even one underperforming employee can cause a company to fall short of its potential. Identifying and correcting underperformance is an obvious priority, but it’s not always so obvious how to improve employee performance.

There are a lot of “carrot and stick” methods to improve employee performance, some leaning more towards the carrot, others the stick. But if you really want your cart to move faster, it might be worth it to guide your mule to a smooth road as well.

The road you set them on will have a big impact on their performance in tangent to how you motivate them.

Here, we’ve collected a list of 6 steps to address the road, the carrot and the stick.

How to Improve Employee Performance in a Company

1. Find why an employee is underperforming

It’s important to not jump to conclusions regarding why an employee is underperforming. Rarely does a person set out to intentionally do a bad job.

The problem could be as simple as not having the proper resources or being under trained. There could be outside influences distracting them from their work. It’s possible that the employee is conflicted about company goals or has lost motivation to fulfill the mission of the company.

Whatever reason is underlying their underperformance, is important to know what it is first if it is to be improved.

2. Encourage Communication

Clearly communicating underperformance is challenging but necessary. Managers should also open the floor to the underperforming employee to articulate what barriers are standing in their way so that the manager can improve their circumstances.

Employee performance can be improved when both the manager and the employee understand where they are, where they need to be, and how they are going to get there.

In addition to the manager and employee having open communication, the entire team should be encouraged to communicate everything from progress, deadlines, expectations, and resources.

Doing this makes it easier to navigate an objective from start to finish within the framework of the team. It opens up opportunities to collaborate and can improve the performance for everyone.

3. Create a positive work environment

With open communication underway, it’s now time to review the work environment. It wouldn’t make sense to encourage communication in an environment where people are intimidated by superiors, arbitrarily reprimanded and their concerns dismissed.

Rather, work towards a work culture that allows employees to voice their opinion and reinforce that their opinions are heard. Giving employees a healthy and happy work environment will foster better results.

Employees will be more likely to contribute their good ideas and hard work to a company that wants to hear them.

4. Provide effective training

Right from the start, provide all new employees with proper training. Make sure that employees know what to do, and the most efficient way of doing it. Once the processes for getting the job done are routine, they’ll be able to contribute their unique ideas and be effective at getting things done.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking training is a one-time thing. Training should be ongoing so that employees can continue to develop their skills. Ongoing training is the way to continuously improve employee performance.

5. Don’t forget to have a little fun

To improve employee performance, make it enjoyable to be at work. Spending 40+ hours a week in an uninspiring environment is a recipe to get uninspiring results.

Study after study has shown that performance is improved when the workday is broken up by small breaks, leisurely strolls, and fresh air. Adding in team building experiences and opportunities to laugh are sure to go a long way towards improving employee performance.

Gamifying work can also improve performance. Set goals that are attached to fun activities, bonuses, or extra vacation time. Friendly competitions can encourage employees to push their performance to the next level.

6. Acknowledge contributions

If you want to boost your employees’ morale and motivate them to give the best they can, then you have to recognize their individual contributions and accomplishments. Be generous with your praises and you’ll notice that staff will become more creative and eager to work.

But be careful. Being generous with general praise will diminish the value and impact of your praise.

Instead, make a habit of mentioning the specific effort you are praising. Rather than simply saying “Good job” say, “Good job on putting together that presentation. It really drove the message home for our client.”

Specific praise will also work towards your goal of encouraging communication. This way, employees will know when and what work is appreciated to be able to do it again.

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6 soft skills everyone needs and employers look for

Though you can't measure soft skills the way you can hard skills, that doesn’t make them any less important. Some examples of soft skills include creativity, analytical thinking, multitasking, verbal and written communications, time management and leadership.

You'll likely see these "soft skills" popping up in job descriptions, next to demands for technical qualifications. Employment experts agree that tech skills may get you an interview, but these soft skills will get you the job—and help you keep it:

Communication skills

This doesn't mean you have to be a brilliant orator or writer. It does mean you have to express yourself well, whether it's writing a coherent memo, persuading others with a presentation or just being able to calmly explain to a team member what you need.

Teamwork and collaboration

Employers want employees who play well with others—who can effectively work as part of a team. "That means sometimes being a leader, sometimes being a good follower, monitoring the progress, meeting deadlines and working with others across the organization to achieve a common goal," says Lynne Sarikas, the MBA Career Center Director at Northeastern University.

Adaptability

This is especially important for more-seasoned professionals to demonstrate, to counter the (often erroneous) opinion that older workers are too set in their ways. "To succeed in most organizations, you need to have a passion for learning and the ability to continue to grow and stretch your skills to adapt to the changing needs of the organization," Sarikas says. "On your resume, on your cover letter and in your interview, explain the ways you've continued to learn and grow throughout your career."

Problem solving

Be prepared for the "how did you solve a problem?" interview question with several examples, advises Ann Spoor, managing director of Cave Creek Partners. "Think of specific examples where you solved a tough business problem or participated in the solution. Be able to explain what you did, how you approached the problem, how you involved others and what the outcome was—in real, measurable results."

Critical observation

It's not enough to be able to collect data and manipulate it. You must also be able to analyze and interpret it. What story does the data tell? What questions are raised? Are there different ways to interpret the data? "Instead of handing your boss a spreadsheet, give them a business summary and highlight the key areas for attention, and suggest possible next steps," Sarikas advises.

Conflict resolution

The ability to persuade, negotiate and resolve conflicts is crucial if you plan to move up. "You need to have the skill to develop mutually beneficial relationships in the organization so you can influence and persuade people," Sarikas says. "You need to be able to negotiate win-win solutions to serve the best interests of the company and the individuals involved."

When it comes to soft skills, show—don't tell

How do you prove you're proficient at, say, critical observation? Demonstrating these soft skills may be more difficult than listing concrete accomplishments like $2 million in sales or a professional certification. But it is possible to persuade hiring managers that you have what they need.

To demonstrate communication skills, for example, start with the obvious. Make sure there are no typos in your resume or cover letter. Beyond that, enhance your communication credibility by writing an accomplishment statement on your resume or cover letter, says Cheryl E. Palmer, president of Call to Career. "Instead of stating, 'great oral and written communication skills,' say, 'conducted presentation for C-level executives that persuaded them to open a new line of business that became profitable within eight months.'"

Learn soft skills

The good news is that, like any skill, soft skills can be learned. The better news? Boosting your soft skills not only gives you a leg up on a new job or a promotion, but these skills also have obvious applications in all areas of a person's life, both professional and personal.

·         Take a Course: Some colleges are mixing technology with areas such as effective written and verbal communication, teamwork, cultural understanding and psychology. Take a writing or public speaking course to boost your communication skills. Look for a conflict-resolution course or "leadership skills" class at your local community college.

·         Seek Mentors: Be as specific as you can about your target skill, and when you're approaching a potential mentor, compliment that person with a specific example in which you've seen him practice that skill, advises Ed Muzio, the author of Make Work Great. "Then ask whether that person would be willing to share ideas with you about how you might achieve the same level of capability," he says. "Maybe it will grow into a long mentoring relationship, or maybe you'll just pick the person's brain for a few minutes."

·         Volunteer: Working with nonprofit organizations gives you the opportunity to build soft skills. And listing high-profile volunteer work on your resume gives you an excuse to point out what you gained there. For example, "As chair of the environmental committee, planned and carried out a citywide park cleanup campaign. Utilized team-building, decision-making and cooperative skills. Extensive report writing and public speaking."

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13 Ways to Encourage Employee Development (and Strengthen Your Team)

Boost Employee Development

In your company's day-to-day routine, professional development activities may not seem like a priority. After all, the workday should be focused on, well, working!

But it’s important that your employees continue to learn and grow professionally. According to go2HR, 40% of people who receive poor employee training leave within the first year. Employee development not only benefits the individual, but it will benefit your company as well.

So, how can you encourage your employees’ professional development? Here are 13 simple ways.

1. Have Regular Reviews

Make sure supervisors are checking in with their supervisees, and that employees’ needs are being met professionally. Do they have enough work on their plates?  Are they being challenged? Are they able to excel and shine?

Maybe they’re ready to take on a new or different kind of project so that they can grow. Similarly, during your reviews, have them reflect on their own work. In what areas do they think they need to improve? And how can you help them do so? Consider having them set their own goals for the next year.

2. Recognize Accomplishments

Employee appreciation is immensely important, as we’ve written about before. According to a study by the APA, 93% of employees who feel valued are more motivated to do their best work. Keeping employees happy and appreciated is an easy way to encourage growth. They’ll feel excited about the prospect of learning more, because you recognize what they’ve already done.

Looking for other ways to build a strong team? Check out our free resources on employee happiness.

3. Allow for Growth Within the Company

Bottom of Form

This goes hand in hand with regular reviews and recognizing accomplishments.  Strive for a company that has upward mobility. If an employee is doing well, allow for promotion opportunities that will give them a sense of accomplishment. Even if your company doesn’t have any higher positions at the moment, consider assigning your employee additional responsibilities. It will make them feel like they are succeeding — because they are!

4. Prioritize Professional Skill Development

Taking the time to focus on specific skills that could use work — and actually working on them — will help your team become better professionals. Maybe your employees would benefit from a public speaking expert coming in, or they could use a workshop to work on their writing skills. Honing in on employee development is not only important for them as an individual — your company will benefit from their improvements.

5. Encourage Outside Class Attendance

Employees can — and should — work on themselves outside of the workplace as well. Push your employees to attend classes, sessions, or conferences focusing on essential skills that are linked to your industry. Afterwards, encourage employees to discuss what they learned with their peers.

6. Encourage Networking

Most people think of networking as a necessary evil for finding a new job. But staying connected and knowing others in the business will help your employee grow in their role over time. Also, your employees’ networks can benefit your company as well. Who knows when a certain connection will come in handy for a business deal, or to fill a needed position in the office.

7. Consider an Office Mentoring Program

A mentoring program can do so much for your business and your team, from employee training for newbies, to building employee loyalty. A mentoring program can also build leadership and develop skills for both junior and senior employees. So tap into your resources!  Employees helping their peers to be even more skilled and talented is a concept you just can’t pass up.

8. Implement Cross-Departmental Training

Allow space in your company for employees to learn from different departments.  They’ll understand the inner workings of your company better, and fresh eyes might notice something about that specific department that should be changed.  

9. Encourage Membership in Professional Organizations

...And help employees choose which ones they might join, depending on their chosen career path. It never hurts to keep a running list of who belongs where. Employees will build relationships this way, learn new skills, stay on top of new developments in their field. Basically, it's just another clever way to network and help your company outreach.

10. Give Them Resources

Make sure your employees know where to find valuable information.  Whether you have an online database of professional organizations they can join, classes they can attend, or you host monthly “lunch and learns,” your employees should have the tools to know how they can move forward.

11. Offer Tuition Reimbursement

If relevant to your industry, consider tuition reimbursement (or partial tuition reimbursement) for your employees’ continued education. It’s a fabulous benefit that will not only attract the best and the brightest talent, but will also allow your employees to grow and learn!

12. Be a Role Model

If you're engaging in some of the above activities, your employees will be more likely to as well.  Make professional development a norm at your company. Be a role model for your team.

13. Build a Collaborative Culture

All this learning and growing should be shared! If employees share the information they’ve learned and the activities in which they are engaging, others will follow suit.  If your workplace feels like an open one, it’ll be an environment conducive to growth.

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7 Ways to Improve Employee Development Programs

Making the right investments in learning and development programs has never been more important – or more of a challenge – for business leaders.

Unfortunately, despite spending approximately $164.2 billion dollars on learning and development programs, many executives still grapple with how to improve and enhance their effectiveness. As research shows, the need to revamp and improve learning programs is an important concern among HR executives.

To better understand this problem, my consulting firm did a thorough review of recent research into learning and development programs, followed by a structured survey with top training executives at 16 major corporations in a diverse set of industries, ranging in size from $1 billion to $55 billion in annual revenues. To understand how providers of training and development view these challenges, we also interviewed leaders of executive education programs at several leading universities.

From this research, we’ve observed seven challenges companies must meet to create development programs that really work:

1. Ignite managers’ passion to coach their employees. Historically, managers passed on knowledge, skills, and insights through coaching and mentoring. But in our more global, complex, and competitive world, the role of the manager has eroded. Managers are now overburdened with responsibilities. They can barely handle what they’re directly measured on, let alone offer coaching and mentoring. Organizations need to support and incentivize managers to perform this work.

2. Deal with the short-shelf life of learning and development needs. It used to be that what you learned was valuable for years, but now, knowledge and skills can become obsolete within months. This makes the need to learn rapidly and regularly more important than ever. This requires organizations to rethink how learning and development happens from a once-in-a-while activity, to a more continuous, ongoing campaign. As Annette Thompson, Senior Vice President & Chief Learning Officer at Farmers Insurance pointed out in an interview, avoiding information overload is vital, so organizations must strike a balance between giving the right information versus giving too much.

3. Teach employees to own their career development. Highly-structured, one-size-fits-all learning programs don’t work anymore. Individuals must own, self-direct, and control their learning futures. Yet they can’t do it alone, nor do you want them to. The development and growth of your talent is vital to your ongoing success, ability to innovate, and overall productivity. It’s a delicate balance, one Don Jones, former Vice President, Learning at Natixis Global Asset Management summarized like this: “We need to have ‘customized’ solutions for individuals, while simultaneously providing scale and cost efficiencies across the organization,” he said.

4. Provide flexible learning options. Telling employees they need to engage in more learning and development activities with their already heavy workload often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and consumed by the question, “When and how will I find the time?” Companies must respond by adopting on-demand and mobile solutions that make learning opportunities more readily accessible for your people.

5. Serve the learning needs of more virtual teams. While most organizations have more people working remotely and virtually, it does require more thought and creativity in how to train this segment of your workforce. This includes formal types of learning through courses, but also the informal mentoring and coaching channels. Just because employees are out of sight doesn’t mean they get to be out-of-mind when it comes to learning and development.

6. Build trust in organizational leadership. People crave transparency, openness, and honesty from their leaders. Unfortunately, business leaders continue to face issues of trust. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, one in four workers say they don’t trust their employer, and only about half believe their employer is open and upfront with them. If leaders disengage or refuse to share their own ongoing learning journeys, how can they expect their people to enthusiastically pursue theirs? It’s the old adage of “lead by example.” If managers want employees to engage in learning and development, then they need to show that they are actively pursuing their own personal learning journeys as well.

7. Match different learning options to different learning styles. With five generations actively in the workforce, organizations must restructure the way employees learn and the tools and activities they use to correctly match the different styles, preferences, and expectations of employees. For example, Millennials came of age using cell phones, computers, and video game consoles, so they expect to use these technologies to support their learning activities.

As leaders, we know the value our learning and development programs bring to our organizations. But we also want to ensure we’re receiving a high return on investment. By clearly understanding the trends emerging in our learning and development programs, we’ll better position our companies to select the right targeted solutions to drive results, increase employee engagement, and increase innovation and productivity.

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How to Ensure your Employees are up to Date With Their eLearning Courses

Adopting eLearning, settling on some employee training software, and deploying your own enterprise online courses are all big steps towards achieving more efficient, flexible and effective employee training for your organization.

As is true for most things in business and in life, however, eLearning doesn’t run very well on autopilot.

It might give you that impression, of course, as it’s much a more automated and hands-off affair compared to traditional classroom based training. But even so, it still needs you, or your instructors that will be operating the courses, to be on top of your employee training program to ensure employee participation and engagement — two things that are essential for its success.

In this article we’ll examine several ways to come up with an effective employee training plan that will increase employee participation and ensure that your employees complete online training courses inside your LMS portal.

1. Schedule properly

One of the main issues that might keep your employees from paying more attention to their eLearning is simply not having enough time.

If your employees have some important project deadlines to meet then they obviously will prefer to invest their time in meeting them instead of “wasting” time learning new skills they don’t immediately need. The same goes for overworked workers (e.g. due to increased seasonal workloads).

It’s not their fault; rather it is you and their managers that have to prioritize what’s important and what’s not, and schedule things like eLearning for the appropriate time when workloads are lighter.

In fact, it’s best that you allocate some time during the week that your employees are allowed to do eLearning — so that they don’t have to sit through their training after a full day’s work, or, worse, on their weekend. Unless, of course, they prefer that.

You should also ensure that their managers are sold on the importance of the company’s training program, and don’t try to rush employees back to work considering any time spent on their online training as “wasted”.

2. Embrace asynchronicity

Another common scheduling mistake when it comes to employee training, is having too many instructor-led-courses that have to happen in real-time, or insisting that your employees take an online lesson at a specific time.

One of the great advantages that eLearning has over classroom-based learning is its asynchronous nature. That is, the fact that learners can login and access their lessons at any time (and from any place).

For example, some of your employees might like studying from home or on weekends. Others might prefer accessing their lessons during their morning or evening commute. As long as they do access them, let them make up their own schedule and keep their own pace.

3. Set a deadline

Yeah, I know, we have just advised you to let your employees “make up their own schedule”.

And we still stand behind that advice: you should not try to micromanage your employees’ access to the LMS portal. But you should definitely give them specific deadlines for completing each of their course modules.

If you don’t, and only set a single far-off final deadline, then they’ll do what the average university student does: they’ll forget about the training program until the very end, and then haste to go complete it as the final deadline looms.

If you don’t want that, and you shouldn’t; it would be very ineffective in terms of knowledge assimilation, set a generous deadline for the completion of each module of your employee training program.

4. Get employees to relate to your training material

Blah blah blah blah blah.

That empty blathering is all that your employees will be able to read in their eLearning courses if you can’t get them to understand “what’s in it for them”.

In other words, to have an effective and engaging online employee training program you need to make your employees see that your course content is relevant to their work.

For this you’ll need two things.

First, the managers, and/or instructors need to set clear objectives for your training program, and communicate them successfully to your employees, while also touting their importance.

Second, the content should be to the point, with concrete examples relevant to your employees’ roles and experiences. Lengthy abstract theoretical passages should be edited out — your employees will only snooze over them anyway.

So, when it comes to effective eLearning content, keep it simple, keep it short and keep it relevant. And then sell the heck out of it to your employees, until they are convinced of that the new skills you’re trying to teach will prove important in their everyday work, not to mention their career advancement.

5. Encourage participation

Sure, you can always yell at them for not completing their training. It won’t help, but it might make you feel better.

But before it gets to that, how about trying some positive encouragement first?

You could, for example, give an extra day off to people who have completed a particular course or course module. Or give a bonus to those who had the best training results. Or maybe just praise your best learners openly, in a company wide email or within earshot of the other employees.

There are may ways you can go about it, including a virtual way, which we’ll describe in the very next tip, but the main goal remains the same: you want to make employees feel that increased participation in the company’s eLearning program is something that will be appreciated by upper management.

6. Let the games begin

Adding an element of play is another sure-fire way of making any process more fun and engaging.

In web based employee training software, or any other kind of software for that matter, this can be achieved through a technique known as “gamification”.

Increasingly popular in eLearning and even more so in mLearning, gamification refers to the use of game-inspired techniques to increase engagement in a non-gaming activity. It’s not kid stuff either: applicable to learners of any age, gamification has demonstrable and measurable effects, as well as deep roots in pedagogy, cognitive science and human psychology.

eFrontPro offers several built-in gamification features, such as points, badges, levels and leaderboards, and it even allows instructors to mix and match them and to customize their behavior in order to implement a particular gamification strategy. It also allows companies to use their custom badges and naming schemes, to get them more consistent with their training content.

We suggest you try to incrementally introduce a few gamification elements to your employee training — you’ll soon discover that there’s nothing like a little competitive element to increase learning engagement and get your employees to try to outdo each other.

7. Hear them out

Training should always be seen as an interactive affair.

By this we mean that there should be a two-way connection between instructors and learners, such that not only the learners acquire new knowledge and guidance from their instructors, but the instructors also get important feedback from the learners, which enables them to improve their course content and teaching approach.

This is just as important for web based employee training as it is for traditional classroom based training. Perhaps even more so, as in traditional learning teacher and learner interaction is inevitable, whereas in eLearning you need to work hard to achieve it.

Where we’re getting with this is simple: you should listen to your learners. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t work in your training courses. Some things might be too abstract, while others might be overly specific. Others, yet, might be hard to understand, or written in a confusing way. There will be also some things that your learners might want to see covered in their courses — stuff that your instructors didn’t consider, or thought was too trivial.

Have your instructors listen to your employee feedback and suggestions, and have them iterate on the course materials until they get them just right.

A modern enterprise LMS like eFrontPro makes the whole process extremely easy, allowing you to work on your content iteratively, create new versions and re-use stuff with ease.

8. Numbers don’t lie

To best way to make sure that your employees are up to date with their eLearning courses is to be up to date with your employees’ training progress yourself.

Don’t just wait for their final test results — take advantage of your eLearning management platform’s reporting capabilities to track their attendance, scores, and overall progress.

eFrontPro, for example, offers a flexible and intuitive reporting system that allows you to track, monitor and chart employee training progress across your whole company, for a particular department or branch, or for any particular employee. And you can even configure eFrontPro to notify you with an email when a particular event, like an employee completing a course module, or test scores becoming available, occurs.

By leveraging your LMS monitoring and reporting capabilities you can get a good, and quantifiable sense of the progress of your employee training program, and easily spot problematic lessons and courses or employees that need a little extra help.

Conclusion

In this post we’ve examined a few tips and techniques for increasing participation and engagement in your company’s online employee training program. The main takeaway we’ve tried to drive home is that running an effective eLearning program needs organizational support and supervision.

Do you have any relevant tips to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section and we’ll try to cover the best of them on a follow-up post.

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