You hire an employee, get them onboarded, and they complete their training. Now you release them into the wild where they are on their own and hope to do things right. What’s wrong with this picture?

Having a training process to onboard new employees is a great thing, but what about their training needs a month down the road, or even a year? Training should be an ongoing process that doesn’t end right after they pass their new-hire course.

Here are some reasons why your employees need an ongoing training program:

1. Memory
When you conduct your new-hire training, you are going to overload your new staff with a ton of information. Understandably, it is all important and crucial information for them to have in order to be successful, but the chances that they will remember every little detail that they learned in the first week or two of getting hired isn’t very high. Having training courses every few weeks or months is crucial to make sure your employees are getting constant refreshers and are more likely to remember everything they need to know.

2. Updates
We live in a time of never ending changes and new technologies. Regardless of your industry or company size, there will most likely be constant changes and enhancements in your product or service that you will need your employees to know about. Sure, you can always send out a blanket email that explains these changes and hope that your staff reads it, but how do you know they actually understand those changes without assessing them on it? When changes occur within any part of your organization, it is necessary to make sure your employees have a good grasp of it.

3. Process
Some people are good at always “winging it” but best practices state that it is best to have business processes in place, especially in an office setting. Ongoing training should always be one of those “processes” in every organization. Sure, everyone has a manager giving updates and most likely team meetings and one-on-ones, but when there are set training processes in place, there are more likely to be less surprises and easier adjustments to any news or changes. When training courses are expected, your employees will be more willing to get things done.

4. Awareness
You know the story. You’re in a meeting and someone is covering a topic that seems completely new to you, but everyone else is nodding their heads like they know exactly what is being discussed. It is very common for some people to miss out on things, whether they weren’t in the office while something was being announced or they just never got word of it. When you assess your employees on these kinds of topics, you know who is aware of things and how much people know.

5. Results
Utilizing an ongoing employee training program and being able to see your employees’ results in real time is everything. There are many different ways you can give information but it isn’t as easy to figure out what people actually know and understand. Being able to see these results not only helps you understand your staff member’s learning ability but also makes it clear to you when some people need real improvements in their training. Being able to measure these results makes it so there is complete transparency between employee and employer.

Training is a never-ending cycle. Most companies are good at making sure their new-hires are given the proper amount of training to get things moving but sometimes forget that the training should never stop. If you are one of those people who would like to grow your training so it expands past an onboarding process, sign up for a free LMS trial and start your ongoing training program today.