A lot of businesses are hiring and training new staff members who will increase their operations over the holidays. In addition, a lot of teams have recently undergone "right-sizing" and contractions, which has forced them to perform more tasks with less resources. As a result, in order to help their teams become more agile, more companies are using temporary workers, according to training specialists.
Situations such as the following could necessitate the use of temporary employees:
• Retail recruiting new reps in order to satisfy the demand over the holidays.
• An annual sprint to revise curriculum in time for deadlines related to compliance.
• Creating a fresh curriculum for managing change in mergers and acquisitions.
• Updates to internal processes necessitating fresh training in order to fulfil adoption deadlines.
• Training on sales enablement and new product launch branding.
• Provisional assistance for a specialised design role to supplement ongoing initiatives carried out by the L&D team. Of course, temporary employees must be given the resources to integrate into existing teams. They need a basic onboarding training to introduce them to key processes and help them become effective — quickly.
Continue reading for tips on creating onboarding training that is especially meant to boost adaptability and agility. Regardless of the time of year, internal learning and development (L&D) teams and human resources (HR) can use these adaptable best practices for training temporary workers to help their organisation achieve the objectives set by recruiting temporary staff.
ONBOARDING: KEY DIFFERENCES TO EFFECTIVELY TRAIN TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES
The best practices and procedures you need to follow to onboard temporary workers for short- and long-term periods differ significantly. The main distinction, of course, is typically that you have a smaller window of time to get your new person up to speed.
But that distinction doesn't have to be a barrier or a silo. By carefully selecting your training materials and incorporating digital options and microlearning to improve your training, you may prepare ahead of time for temporary hiring. Although it could be tempting, a temporary hire might find too much unnecessary information if you employ your current onboarding training materials. Instead, plan and refresh your onboarding training materials using the checklist that follows.
These steps can also be used in situations where you haven't had much lead time and get measurable results.
A CHECKLIST FOR TEMPORARY EMPLOYEE TRAINING PROGRAMS:
We advise reducing the scope of your curriculum and timetable for expedited onboarding. Shorter, more focused skill-training modules are required. Aim to incorporate experience-based and collaborative learning as well. Allocate roughly one to two weeks for training, part of which should be completed on the job to boost output, interest, retention, and learning.
STEP 1
Make a list of the tasks and the abilities your temporary employee will need to perform. Instead of concentrating on the "why," train staff on the "what" and "how" of their jobs. To assist new hires in learning the fundamentals, place a strong emphasis on training for straightforward, repeatable tasks. Simplifying will allow employees to become proficient in a matter of days, reducing the amount of time they need to make decisions or seek assistance. Give a summary of how the more complex tasks you're training for will affect the overall outcome, which will motivate them to do the task correctly.
STEP 2
You can choose whether to mix instructor-led training (ILT) and on-the-job (OTJ) training in order to reduce overall seat time, based on the learning audience and their tasks. With this method, students can practise their newly acquired skills as soon as they watch the demonstration, which promotes quicker skill acquisition, prompts questions to be answered, and increases retention through repetition.
STEP 3
Give visible job aids and materials to newly hired employees. Make use of readily downloaded, mobile-friendly resources like PDFs and webpages. If you have any brief microlearning films or animations, include them. Use handouts if you don't. These materials ought to be made with the tools necessary for students to gain new abilities and review material before raising any concerns. Furthermore, information about how to escalate inquiries when necessary is integrated into the task aids. Your new hires must understand where to access information, who to contact for help, and when to escalate issues (especially for customer service agents).
STEP 4
Keep in mind that the best strategy is to assign easy jobs to contractors and temporary employees, freeing up your full-time (permanent) staff to handle more difficult work. To enhance learning retention and experience, onboarding should be task-oriented, locally relevant, and repetitive. A full-time staff member performing quality control is a requirement for certain teams. If assigning a staff member to this position makes sense for your team, think about it.
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