On-The-Job training (OTJ) is a hands-on method of teaching skills, knowledge, and competencies needed for new employees to perform their jobs.
The objective of this type of training is integrate employees into their new positions while training at the same time. Training is always critical for an organization, therefore creating an efficient process that responds to current and future needs is necessary.
Steps:
Evaluate and analyze the training needs: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a great start to observe performance trends. They provide information to identify areas of opportunity.
Analyze if these areas of opportunity are related to knowledge, skills or competencies. This evaluation can also be used for other types of training, such as behavioral, values, compliance, growth, etc.
Set Goals & Objectives: SMART Goals are the best approach as you will be able to demonstrate with data if the objective of the training was met.
Create a Training Program: On-The-Job Training needs a plan to accomplish the objectives, this plan is the Training Program. The first characteristic you need to decide when creating a Training Program is its methodology: Classroom, Mentorship and Side by Side training are common options as they are simple and task-oriented.
Develop the Program Material: Get specific in this point.
Create the content's outline: Your outline is how you organize your training content. Make sure it follows a logical sequence of learning and going from the basics to the specifics. A good practice is to create sections based on the objectives you have previously set.
Research content: Use your Standard Operating Procedures to research the content and decide formats you will use to make it more interactive, PowerPoints, teach back, demonstrations, etc.
Decide frequency and or training duration: On-The-Job Training can be very versatile depending on the process to teach. You could transfer the knowledge in just one session of a couple of hours or divide the material into different modules and sessions in a timeline.
Measure Success: Depending on what you'll be training, you can decide what methodology is more adequate to measure success. For example, if the training is about a skill, then it's a good idea the trainee demonstrates that skill, in other scenarios the best option could be a written/online test where you want to assess knowledge acquired.
Use your SMART Objectives to confirm the success of your training initiative.
Gather Feedback: Use surveys to capture the collaborator's feeling and thoughts about the training.
What went well? What can be improved? Are there important questions in your survey that will help you to improve the potential of your On-The-Job Training.
A great way to start is to check out our On-The-Job Training Template located in the Manual section of your Dashboard under "Create your Own".
Customize the template based on your needs following the guidelines below:
Update the Title and Purpose of the training. For the Title try to be as clear as possible with the the name of the training you will use the Activated Checklist for. Under Purpose provide instructions of when and why this template should be used and how to start an instance of the Activated Checklist.
Next step, select the type of training, whether this is the first time you are training the collaborator(s) or if it's a re-training on a process or processes
Selecting First Time training or Re-training is mostly for internal records. In either way the system prompts you to enter the topics to train in the Instructions panel, under Conditions. The step is provisioned with 10 spaces to add topics for retraining, you can either remove or add more items based on your needs.
Next step is to enter the first Training Topic into the checklist, as you see in the images, the first procedure to be retrained is: "Enter the quote in the system"
This topic will be replicated into a complete section:
Header: Training Topic
Training: Proceed to deliver the training using the material created and methodology selected
Trainee Sign-Off (topic): Trainee confirms the topic was reviewed and clarified as needed
For the step View SOP our suggestion is to upload the document in the Instructions Panel under "Show an existing procedure" and then "Click to select a procedure"
Next step is to personalize the Demonstration section. This is to confirm the trainees can perform the different actions in the step using the resources available. For this task you need to break down the training topic into actions. The checklist is provisioned with 6 points for this, but you can remove or add more as needed.
The trainer will observe the trainee performing each action and determine their competence.
The last step is to validate the knowledge acquired in the Finishing up section. Here you're confirming whether the trainee qualifies for a certification or not. If the trainee does not qualify for a certification, the process needs to be repeated for Re-training.
It is advised to create a document that outlines the standard for a certification to make the process more consistent.
Now that your template has been customized is ready to be used. Just click the "Run Checklist" button in the active criteria and enter the name of the trainee in the activity name to start.