Let’s start with a common scenario that managers face relating to new employees and their performance proficiency:
Mark has just completed 3 days of training on operating the CRM software in the enterprise software company he started working at a week ago.
Mark’s manager Carol expects him to hit the ground running and begin showing results quickly, but is also aware of the often-quoted statistic that on average, people remember only 20% of what they learned during training sessions.
Furthermore, even if Mark absorbed 50% of the information, he’s still liable to make a series of mistakes, and repeatedly ask for assistance, in the early period following the completion of the training sessions.
Carol is therefore restrained about Mark’s initial progress, and is looking forward to the day when he will be fully comfortable and familiar to operating Salesforce effectively.
A central challenge of employee development is mending the gap between the knowledge attained during the initial training sessions for new employees and the moment reached at which such employees can perform their required tasks independently and proficiently. Although employees learn a lot during training, once the initial process ends, much of the knowledge is lost and full competence is still far from achieved.
It’s not that it’s the trainer’s or the instructional designer’s fault. Even in the most engaging, innovative and well-executed training event, the proficiency gap still exists.
Experienced learning and development leaders recognize the basic fact that most learning takes place beyond the initial formal learning sessions. It's simply the way the human mind learns new materials. There is a natural tendency to learn by repetition and practice, following the initial stage of discovery and observation.
Whether it’s a child learning to ride a bicycle or an adult learning to operate a particular enterprise software, training takes time. The saying is of course that “practice makes perfect,” not “hearing makes perfect”.
WalkMe is the ultimate cloud tool for training, and can be used with any application that is run on a web browser. It’s super easy to include in your program – just include a small snippet of code – and responds to any layout changes on your site, and to any device it may be accessed on. WalkMe has enormous implications for every part of your business. It can cut training times for your employees, help customers train themselves instead of using up all your customer service resources, increase sales team productivity, increase free-to-paid conversions, and help your users do what they want to do, instead of worrying about how to do it. WalkMe walkthroughs are easy to create using a browser extension, and can be personalized for each user, including if they are a new user and what language they speak. WalkMe is the perfect tool for turning a complex and high-powered piece of software into an easy-to-use program your customers can’t live without.
If you would like to receive a white paper to the topic, just ask us or visit www.walkme.com.
