This article explores the importance of formalizing soft skills training within onboarding processes. It highlights best practices and real-world examples of companies successfully integrating soft skills training from day one. By prioritizing soft skills, organizations can set clear expectations, improve employee performance, and cultivate a more positive and productive work environment.
There are five things employers can do to add soft-skills training to formal onboarding for new hires.The best way to train soft skills and reinforce their importance is to formalize re-training intervals. One of the most powerful tools employers have for improving employee soft skills starts on day one: onboarding and up-to-speed training.
What happens when new employees walk through the door on their first day? How are those first days and weeks leveraged when it comes to communicating which soft skills are important and how they are evaluated? Make sure you know exactly what happens with your new hires in the formal orientation, onboarding, and up-to-speed training. Most employers have only a minimal process for addressing soft skills in their formal onboarding process. Of course, some are better at this than others. And be given a list of some rules and traditions It's also important to carry consistent soft skills focus through the inevitable hand-off to the hiring manager, once the official orientation program is complete. That’s where so much of the real onboarding action is going to happen and that’s where the ball is often dropped.If you want to send the message that soft skills behaviors are truly a high priority, then you have to pay more than lip service. How much of your onboarding and up-to-speed training is dedicated to spelling out performance standards and expectations for those high-priority soft skill behaviors? How much time is dedicated to championing those behaviors and teaching them?As one savvy leader in a very successful retail chain put it: “For every hour we spend teaching a cashier how to operate the register, we spend at least an hour teaching them customer service skills—how to interact with customers and how to solve their problems.”There is a rental car company that prides itself on hiring only college graduates for every position, no matter how entry-level. They also pride themselves on an onboarding process that not only teaches every new hire the business but also makes it clear to new hires exactly what kind of workplace citizenship is expected. The provided training materials spell out everything new hires must learn, from week to week. From day one they are expected to be working, helping out in any way they can, during the day. There are also weeklyOf course, not every company has the resources to provide such a robust program. However, there are still ways to formalize soft skills training in small ways with a large impact. A senior director in one company said this of his team: “When it came to email, they did a bunch of things that drove everybody crazy. We developed a list of what to do and don’t do for email communication and we built in a 30-minute module in orientation. Problem solved.”A similar solution to poor meeting etiquette in a large law firm demonstrates how soft skills training is valuable across the chain of command—no matter how senior or experienced employees may be. The firm began explicitly teaching new hires how to prepare for and conduct themselves in meetings—and it wasn’t just the new associates whose meeting manners were not so great. After they developed the program,As a result, said the senior partner, “We had a real change in our culture around meetings. People in this firm became religious about following the rules of conduct. Our meetings got much better and they remain so. It’s a centerpiece of our culture now.
Business SOFT SKILLS ONBOARDING TRAINING EMPLOYER EMPLOYEE
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