Defining an employee's critical behaviors is the most important step for a good training program! You must define what your new employees need to be able to do before creating any training materials.
Video
In this video, you'll learn one simple approach to identifying your employee's critical behaviors. Once you nail these behaviors down, you will have a clear picture of what new hires need to be able to do, which will clarify what your training should include (and not include).
Activity
Now it's your turn to give it a try! In the activity below, you will write down:
- the role you are training
- 3 tasks
- 3 skills
- 3 knowledge areas
Schedule a coaching call
Now that you've watched the video and tried the exercise, schedule a coaching call with me (Jonathan) so we can hammer out a complete list of critical behaviors.
In case you don't have time to watch the video, you can skim through the summary below.
Define proficiency first
One of our customers told us that before using ScreenSteps, along with a new training approach (that we're discussing in this workshop), her team was able to get new employees to the required level of proficiency needed––it just took a long time. After ScreenSteps, the time to proficiency decreased significantly.
While that's a great testimonial, the keyword I want to focus on is "proficient."
This customer had identified what employees need to do to be considered "proficient." Or, in other words, the critical behaviors new employees need to be able to do.
Once this customer had those behaviors figured out, they were able to create training materials and exercises that significantly decreased the time to proficiency (shaving off more than 30 days).
What does proficiency look like for you?
Before we can create an amazing onboard training program, you must first figure out what a proficient employee looks like. What do proficient employees do?
We call these our critical behaviors.
One approach to identifying the critical behaviors is to write down the:
- Tasks
- Skills
- Knowledge
...of a proficient employee.
Below is an example of some critical behaviors for a customer support rep.
This is just a starting point. Once we get some of these written down, we could clarify the details a little more and run them by the new employee's future manager to make sure they are accurate.
Action––start writing!
Start writing down the tasks, skills, and knowledge for a proficient employee. Then, schedule a time with me to refine a list that we can use to go forward.
Follow up
If you are struggling to write down the tasks, ask around to get a list of requests and questions that employees need to respond to.
In the video above, I check out Zendesk (our ticketing system) because I'll be hiring a new customer support rep (as an example). Looking through tickets gives me a good idea of what kind of questions a new rep needs to be able to answer, and what kind of tasks a new rep will need to be able to do.
If you can nail down the tasks/jobs that your new hire will be doing, your onboard training will be a huge success.