Suggestions and Guidelines for Training Policy in USA

Training new and existing employees can be a company’s biggest challenge, especially in a
rapidly changing business environment. USA is one of the most developed countries in the
world. So the training and development programs play a vital role in the country. Though the
policy is good enough and well structured, here some steps in mentioned to make the training
program more efficient and effective. I think it will increase the productivity of employees.

Here are some key steps that one should consider to both build out and update an effective
training and development program.

Benchmark against the competition

Before agreeing to support a new initiative, company leaders always want to know what the
competition is doing and whether you’re doing more or less. This certainly holds true for training
and development; that’s why it helps to network with professional colleagues and through
organizations like the Society for Human Resource Management to find out what others are
doing.

Start by reviewing social media sites to see what customers are saying about the company and
competition; that will reveal information about customer satisfaction and preferences that may
also support a request for a new training and development.

And then there are all the online surveys one regularly receives from vendors. Fill them out to
get the report at the end of the process. This is the kind of information will need to support the
request for a new training and development initiative.

Survey your employees

The best source of information about organizational performance and needs are your current
employees. They know a lot about what’s going on and what, if anything, should be changed.
They’ll appreciate your interest and provide valuable feedback about what could be better or
eliminated. We held focus groups to see what current employees wanted and needed:

 They wanted to know what was expected of them, why it was needed, and how to do it.
  They wanted to be trained by someone who knew what they were talking about. We
selected supervisors or outstanding employees, and then trained them to be trainers so
that they’d know what and how to train, and how to make the training interesting,

Run it like a business

Every new business starts with a strategic plan. Make sure you draft a plan for your training
effort that includes all the classic elements:

 Clearly state your purpose and proposed deliverables. Show that you understand the
depth and breadth of what you’re proposing.
 Include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis that will
help identify the appropriate training.
 Construct a realistic budget. Include all expenses, and be conservative (better to under-
promise and over-deliver).
 Include an analysis of the benefits to your organization so that everyone can better
understand the return on their investment.
 Know the numbers. Work closely with your company’s financial team to include the
appropriate information and how best to display it.
 Conduct pilot classes to make sure your plan works. Trial runs help identify shortcomings
and allow you to refine and make the program as good as everyone expects and needs it
to be.

Weave it into your company’s culture

Companies want happy employees, so consider a “life-long training” philosophy that focuses on
employee satisfaction. When making promotion decisions, give preference to employees who
completed training and performed well. A promotion should be one of the rewards for their
efforts. And it answers the employee’s question, “What’s in it for me?”

Celebrate achievements and successes. Let everyone in your organization know when someone
completed training and what that means to their growth opportunities. Advertise your programs
and participants in internal communications, display their pictures and stories , and talk about it
at every employee gathering.
Increase employee engagement by planning more opportunities for them to get involved. They
could be trainers or subject matter experts, or could assist in evaluating their new colleagues and
helping to reinforce their training.

Use technology to your advantage

It is better to use technology throughout training and new hire onboarding process. The program
may have several courses categorized by topic (company values, client interactions, our company
software, etc). It may cover the topics in a way that is beneficial for all types of learners
including visual, audio, reading/writing, and kinesthetic.

Using training management software gives us access to great resources like video tutorials and
audio files of how to interact with a client via phone. With each video tutorial, there is a reading
segment covering the main points of the video to reiterate the content covered and to allow for
employees to write down the information at their own pace.

Match your high performers with new employees

The best way to onboard a new employee is simply to have them work with the department
supervisor or high-performing employee side-by-side for a few days. The supervisor can help
them get situated, walk them through common tasks and projects, and show the new staff
member how someone experienced does their job. This personal approach lets the new worker
ask questions at their own pace and see the steps in action.

Although larger training programs are more cost and time-efficient for a company, sometimes
they’re not enough. Pamphlets and presentations will bore them so that they barely process the
information being delivered to them. People are much less likely to ask clarification questions
when they are in a large group, so the new staff members will likely start getting lost but will be
too embarrassed to ask for help. That’s why we’ve put such a focus on mentorship and employee
run training.
Create excitement about a “boring” training topic

One of the best ways to capture your employee’s attention is by incentivizing training and
practice. In my own personal opinion there are three incentives that motivate most employees -
money, time off work, and free food.

If you’re having a training session that involves your employees, turn it into an experience they
can get excited about. Create a half-day session for the training with a catered lunch where
employees get the other half of the day off as an incentive for being in attendance.

The real fun begins when the training is over. You can continue rewarding employees for
implementing what they learned. An example of this could be employees who change their
password every 90 days without you having to ask them receive a gift card or a free lunch.

Use stories to show your employees the value

Too often training is about providing content for people to use in their jobs but without the
stories and examples people can use to relate it to their jobs. My training success tip is to include
specific stories of how to use the tools from training in your day-to-day job. If you can relate the
stories to actual situations and problems the people see in their daily jobs, it will help them to
better understand and use the training tools. I always use stories in all of my training and have
worked to improve my storytelling to further improve my training.

Proposed Training Policy for USA

Designing a training policy includes many thing and steps to be done before starting it. In USA,
proposing a perfect training program is so much complex. As USA is a developed country, the
employees are mostly skilled and sophisticated. So in USA, if a company wants to start a training
program they need to think about the following thing:

1. Needs assessment and learning objectives: This part of the framework development

3. Delivery mode: What is the best way to get your message across? Is web-based training
more appropriate, or should mentoring be used? Can vestibule training be used for a
portion of the training while job shadowing be used for some of the training, too? Most
training programs will include a variety of delivery methods.

4. Budget: It means how much a training program will need to complete it. Base on the
types of training and duration of it decide the budget of training.

5. Delivery style: Depending on the type of training that needs to be delivered, you will likely
choose a different mode to deliver the training. An orientation might lend itself best to
vestibule training, while sexual harassment training may be better for web-based training.
When choosing a delivery mode, it is important to consider the audience and budget
constrictions.

6. Audience: Considering your audience is an important aspect to training. How long have
they been with the organization, or are they new employees? What departments do they work
in? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you develop a relevant delivery style
that makes for better training. For example, if you know that all the people attending the
training are from the accounting department, examples you provide in the training can be
focused on this type of job. If you have a mixed group, examples and discussions can touch
on a variety of disciplines

7. Content: The content you want to deliver is perhaps one of the most important parts in
training and one of the most time-consuming to develop. Development of learning objectives
or those things you want your learners to know after the training makes for a more focused
training.

8. Timelines. How long will it take to develop the training? Is there a deadline for training
to be completed?

9. Communication: Once you have developed your training, your next consideration is how
you will communicate the available training to employees. In a situation such as an
orientation, you will need to communicate to managers, staff, and anyone involved in the
training the timing and confirm that it fits within their schedule. If it is an informal training,
 such as a brown bag lunch on 401(k) plans, this might involve determining the days and
times that most people are in the office and might be able to participate. Because employees
use Mondays and Fridays, respectively, to catch up and finish up work for the week, these
days tend to be the worst for training.

10. Measuring effectiveness of training: After we have completed the training, we want to
make sure our training objectives were met. One model to measure effectiveness of training is the

Kirkpatrick model, Donald Kirkpatrick, Evaluating Training Programs, 3rd ed. (San Francisco:

Berrett-Koehler, 2006). developed in the 1950s. His model has four levels:

1. Reaction: How did the participants react to the training program?

2. Learning: To what extent did participants improve knowledge and skills?

3. Behavior: Did behavior change as a result of the training?

4. Results: What benefits to the organization resulted from the training