One of the challenges with employee training is the fact that those with the most knowledge of a particular business process, function, policy, or procedure may not have the time or the right skill sets to be effective trainers. Often, there is a wealth of information, knowledge, and experience locked away in the heads of key staff, and when those staff leave, organizations struggle to bring others sufficiently up to speed. One solution to this dilemma is to implement employee-driven training materials.
Set the Expectation That Staff Share Knowledge
As noted above, many employees don’t have the time or interest to do their day-to-day job and provide training to others. Many also see training others as a potential threat to their own jobs. Set the expectation in your organization that senior employees are expected to contribute to generating training materials for junior and new staff and that doing so is perceived positively and recognized.
Make It Easy
Don’t make your employees jump through hoops to provide training materials. Make it simple. Don’t require elaborate formatting or other requirements. Consider allowing senior employees to dedicate a small percentage of their time to creating and providing these materials. Create a designated location to provide the information (such as an internal file-share), and task an individual or a team with formatting the content into a standardized, user-friendly format.
Make it Available
Almost nothing will discourage staff from contributing to the training knowledge base than the feeling that their work has gone unnoticed or unused. If you are going to ask staff to help generate content for training materials, make sure that the content is used. In addition, ensure that the staff that provided the materials are aware that it’s being used and that it is valued by the company.
Not all employees are effective trainers. Many don’t have sufficient time or simply don’t want the added responsibility. Yet, it’s crucial to retain the knowledge of key staff in the event they leave the company. Establishing the expectation that staff will be required to document and share their knowledge and providing the tools and time to do so, you can help ensure that your intellectual capital doesn’t walk out the door.