INDUCTION TRAINING ONLINE

A learning management system is a time efficient way for training. Most companies train their new employees for the sake of it. Often a new employee carries away nothing. It usually is a great waste of time and the new employees' spirit could end up being dampened after the prolonged boredom. This might come in the form of lot of notes given to them. The new joiners who are expected to study these and understand the intricacies of the firm and its work hardly find anything interesting about it. This also goes to show how disorganized the workplace is and the fact that time is not being valued.

A bad training program, where the onus is entirely upon the nervous new joiner could be due to lack of proper schedule or planning ahead of the joining date of the new employee. It could also be because of the scarcity of experienced colleagues who could walk through the notes and help out the new joiner. Invariably, this kind of a casual training at the beginning of a relationship hardly augurs well and the employee might soon feel helpless and the lack of proper guidance and nurturing. What is worse is that some of these notes might be really old and outdated showing lack of importance given by the firm to the information floating around.

A good way to organise learning and training for the new joiners without compromising the time of the existing senior employees, is by having a proper online training management system complete with user friendly tools. These tools are typically very flexible and can be changed as per the needs of the training. The system you choose should allow lectures, demos and presentations, so much so even the senior colleagues can participate in a training class or two adding a personal touch to the whole program. This kind of training program could be tailor made according to the rank and position of the joiner as the information could be easily managed.

The online training program could also enable many new joiners to participate on discussion forums. This would create in them a sense of participation, team work and understanding each other's view point. So, the new joiners learn and at the same time gel with their colleagues. It is a good way to train them in communication too. Employees can also touch base with their line managers or subject matter experts, at the end of the training program. Some of them could give a presentation for example, of whatever they have learned, thus enabling others to judge the effectiveness of the program. This would also be a good opportunity for the new joiners to interact with the team and display their grasping ability.

Quizzes or mini exams online could also mark the end of the training program. The online learning management system could be customised to enable a quiz at the end of the training, in whatever topics were covered and probably send the results to the line manager. This could act as an incentive or motivation for learning too. Online training could hence be a very powerful tool.