The Industry I Love!
I absolutely love to help others learn! It’s what I love most about my career. Improving employee performance has been such a huge part of my life for so many years, and it brings me a lot of joy when I see someone improve and grow by sharing with them what I’ve learned.
Over the past 15 years or so I have watched somewhat painfully as the learning and development industry has struggled to innovate. In our industry we love people, you have to, but we also tend to do the same things over and over again and just slap a different name or image on it. You’ve probably seen it before. I believe that in the past few years alone I’ve heard at least 5 different terms for what we call “micro training”, but they all have similar outcomes! “Effectively educating employees in a way that focuses on critical points, increases engagement, knowledge retention, and application within a short period of time.
YouTubers are masters at this. Would you prefer to:
A) Watch a 2-hour video on how to use Adobe After Effects?
B) Or have access to a series of 12-minute videos where you can pick and choose what you need when you need it?
For most, the answer is pretty clear.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom. Our industry has made some amazing strides in our ability to create and deliver stunning content in a short amount of time, track impact and engagement, and measure results. However, we tend to miss out on the most important opportunities, driving performance through training.
Simply put, it’s the ability to identify, track, target, and engage individual employees with customized content based on their specific needs at the time they need it. In contrast we’ve all seen the “fire-hose approach”, where we create a great course and just send it to everyone and hope that it solves all of our problems! If you’ve been around long enough you know that there’s a lot more to it than that.
The Question that Changed my Perspective
Years ago, I asked myself this question: Is it simply enough to spend weeks working with a team of content creators, subject matter experts, and a panel of high performing employees to create a visually stunning training course with great content? I used to think so, but my mindset shifted to something more impactful.
Most of us create training content for new products, processes, soft skills training, and compliance, but how often do we focus on developing custom training specifically for under performing employees when and where it’s needed most? Do we carefully target different groups of employees based on performance levels with hand crafted content based on what they need? Do we analyze the data to determine what skills or processes will make the most impact? I wasn’t, and I wanted to challenge how things had been done. I wanted to make more of an impact on my organization, and more importantly on my employees.
So where do you start? Well, managers and supervisors are typically responsible for performance managing their employees and providing training and coaching where and when needed. But there is often little to no standard, little back office support, and not much of a partnership. Typically, it consists of a variety of departments providing reports to managers on how employees are performing (aka “the naughty list”), and the manager would then spend some time coaching them to the best of their ability. This is a great approach, however, not all managers do this, and certainly not all of them do it well. It is how things have been done for years and in the right setting it can be very effective.
But I started to realize that the vast majority of accountability and support was solely in the hands of management. There was some leadership development courses to help them in their efforts, and of course employee reporting, but that’s where the support ended. What if we could improve that partnership? What if we could leverage the resources available to us to better support managers in their performance management efforts?
So that’s exactly what I did, and the pay back was enormous! Managers were so grateful for the support and the structure, and they felt more empowered to help their employees because they not only knew who they needed to help, but when they needed it, and how to help them. Those three things were the key: who, when, and how.
Employees were not only performing at a higher level, but they were happier, and more focused on creating an exceptional customer experience. The gap that existed between our two groups began to close, and we felt united in our efforts to help each individual when and where they needed it most. It was extremely satisfying, and I knew that we hit upon something huge. A simple concept that lead to massive results.
How Can You Deliver the Same Results?
So, you might be saying to yourself, “ok, that’s great, but where do I start? How can I achieve those same results?” The good news is that it’s a lot simpler than you might realize, and you don’t need a huge team or any fancy tools to do it. I did it for years by myself simply using excel, emails, and a few basic training courses and coaching guides.
I’m more than happy to give away the secrets, but first let me give you a heads up … you may need to change the way you think first. It may also require a slight culture shift in your organization. If you say: “that’s not my responsibility” or “someone else does that” I encourage you to challenge that way of thinking. Most importantly, have an open mind and remember that often times small and simple efforts can result in a huge impact. I promise that as you work through it the results will come.
Here’s a basic breakdown (We’ll cover these in more detail in some of our future blog posts):
- Measure Performance: You need to measure employee performance through basic metrics (ensure that your data is consistent, and accurate)
- Pick a Metric: Determine what metrics are the most important to your organization (what will make the most impact?)
- Identify the Struggle: Work with high performing employees and subject matter experts to identify the top 3-5 reasons why employees struggle in this area. If possible, you should also refer to available data to back up your claims.
- Identify Best Practices: Identify the top best practices and skills for each reason above. Focus on the critical points that will help employees improve the most! Keep it as direct and simple as possible.
- Create a Course: Create a simple course that focuses on teaching the importance of this metric, why employees struggle, and how they can improve. This can be a video, screen captured PowerPoint narrative, a Captivate or Rise 360 course, or even a live webinar. The choice is yours. Just remember to focus on the critical points that will make the most impact. I recommend keeping it in short modules, 7 minutes or less.
- Create a Coaching Guide: Create a simple, 1-page coaching guide that managers can refer to in order to help their employee improve in this specific area. It can be a checklist if that helps keep them on track.
- Write an Email: Create a simple template to use when communicating this to bottom performers and their managers. Use this message to let them know that you’ve recognized that they may need some assistance in a particular area and how you’re going to help them. Remember to keep it positive!
- Launch it Right: Get buy in from upper management and get them involved to help kick off the program. Their support and involvement will ensure that it gets traction and stays strong long term. Managers and employees need to know what to expect and what’s expected of them. Keep it positive and very clear.
- Be Consistent: Determine how often you want to engage low performers. If it’s a metric that is fairly volatile and can change day to day you may want to wait till you have a sufficient amount of data. Typically once per month is a good start.
- Identify Low Performers: Identify low performing employees (and/or teams) for this metric and send them and their manager an email, assign the training course(s), and provide the manager with the coaching guide. Repeat “monthly”.
And lastly, what happens next is key. Be sure to follow up!
This can be done by a single person or a group of people, that will depend on the dynamic of your organization. Follow up with the employee and manager to ensure that they’ve received the training, have taken it, understand the coaching guide and are using it, and then take the opportunity to answer any questions they may have. This might be a group email to all low performers and their managers, or it might be a call to each individual, again this depends on your bandwidth.
I highly recommend keeping it as personal as possible, make a phone call when you can, even if it’s not to everyone. This will always trump a group email and will give you direct feedback on what you can improve or add to the program. In the end, the level of care that you show them will shine through in your messaging, your training course, the language you use, and in all your efforts.
What Are You Focused On Most?
Remember, this is about the individual, and what you are doing to help them, from the manager to the employee. I’ll tell you right now that focusing just on the numbers, while very important, is not enough and will be felt by those you’re trying to help. Always remember that trust is in part earned by the level of care you show for those you are serving. And increased trust almost always results in an increased desire and motivation to improve.
The steps I laid out above can and should be very simple and will help you to improve employee performance in your organization. So do NOT overthink it, and do NOT over complicate it. If you do you could lose steam and it could fizzle out before you get started. Instead start small and simple and adapt and grow as you go. In the end, remember that how much attention and effort you put into it is directly tied to how much impact it will make. I’d recommend starting by focusing on just one segment, such as your bottom performers for your most critical metric.
So, find what motivates you, what brings you joy in your realm of influence, why you do what you do, and use that to drive you and your team forward in achieving your business goals!