Give high-calibre recruits the best training tools.
Once we have gone to the effort of getting our high calibre virtual employee in place, with some tailored advertisements, pre-screening, assessments, tasks and some in-depth interviewing, it’s important that we get them trained up quickly and effectively. Again this is no different to running an offline business, where we want to ensure that our staff members are well equipped to do a great job of the tasks we set them. This is where we need an employee training plan set into place.
One of the best ways of teaching a virtual worker can be using a work wiki. A good example of this is EditMe which, for $30 a month, allows you to run a password-protected work wiki that can be frequently updated and can carry a whole wealth of training material all organized and laid out in a logical and efficient system. You can add, edit and delete pages, share documents, videos and images and personalize it to your own company’s look and feel. When you write content and code for the wiki it is done right in your web browser with no special software to install.
For a new employee joining your team, think what a great help an employee training plan can be in making them feel part of the “family” and in improving their own skill sets. It also sets the right tone that you are investing time in the employee in the hope that it will be a long-term relationship.
You can set EditMe up with an Induction area for any new virtual employee to log into and have the first week’s training tasks all set out for them. This might begin with basic material like a video about company aims and culture and how to navigate around the whole induction/training area. Once this material has been written and recorded, of course, it takes up no time apart from that of a supervisor occasionally lending a guiding hand and showing the way to the new team member, whenever needed.
The videos and articles will then likely move into areas like product knowledge training, work administration (things like using Basecamp, writing EOD emails and using Google Documents) and the core components of what the business is about ( its deliverables).
For Melbourne SEO Services it would be about SEO and we would take our new employee through the detailed processes of writing, spinning and submitting articles and how to do keyword research, for example. The training material should be as comprehensive as possible and can be a reference point for them to return to at any point in the future, if they need a refresher course on something.
Of course the new employee’s time on EditMe can be balanced with daily talks with his or her supervisor on Skype, so that the inevitable questions that they have can be answered.
So there you have it. These are just some of the tips that you can follow to create an effective new employee training plan. Want to learn more small business marketing tips? Just click here.