Here are our top 5 tips on training your virtual employee quickly and painlessly. As you are aware, training is the key to successfully managing your business and yet, this is where most business owners fail their virtual employees and even their internal staff. Often they are too busy running the business to strategically think about how to develop their key people. It doesn’t have the be this way.
We highly recommend setting up your virtual employees for success by starting with some foundational training that includes some cultural differences training, then providing the context of how the specific tasks fit into the overall picture of the business. In addition, you need to introduce them to your core values, mission, and service vision.
Training is something that should be an on-going process in your business. To help you, we wanted to provide you with some of our best practices to guide you in setting you and your virtual employee for the best success.
1. Assess the experience of your virtual employee. Some virtual employees may already have industry or task experience while others may be brand new. Clearly evaluating their level of understanding will determine where and how you start your training program.
2. Outline of the topics that you want to introduce to your virtual employee and then create a strategic training plan over the next 90 days. This should be updated every quarter as your virtual employee grows into his or her role.
Start with an introduction of the nature of business of your company. If your virtual employee already has experience in this type of job or industry, then it will be easier for you to train in other areas of the business. If, however, your virtual employee does not have any experience, you need to be prepared him or her for their role.
3. Create activities for them to practice their skills and evaluate their work. A mistake some business owners make is that they teach it, but don’t provide feedback or assessment of the virtual employee's understanding of the tasks. Having your virtual employee perform an evaluation or practice reinforces the learning process in a safe environment. It also allows the business owner to see where the gaps are in understanding.
At HireSmartVirtualEmployees.com we train in all modalities so that no matter what the learning style the virtual employee has, we make sure that we accommodate for them.
4. Whenever possible, use live instructor lead training. We have trained hundreds of people and by far the best results come from live training. Being able to teach a topic, interact with the students, and then assess their learning based on the activities has allowed the virtual employees we place to have a much higher rate of success than on-line training alone.
There are many programs like GotoWebinar.com, GotoMeeting.com, Join.me, or using Skype’s share screen feature all allow you to fully engage with your virtual employee.
5. Make sure you are asking questions during the training. Asking questions that show the application of the training will net the best results. Learning is always more fun when it is interactive. This accomplishes 2 things. It allows you to keep your virtual employee engaged in the process and confirms understanding.
These are the proven training methods that we have used to train hundreds of people. If you would like us to help you with your next hire, we would welcome the opportunity to speak with you about your staffing and training needs. Sign up today for a free consultation.