Training is more than just a signature of completion: Checking competency

As your new team member is going through the training process, make sure that you’re touching base and asking them questions after they complete each section.

There are a few different types of questions you should ask them. First, ask them if they have any questions or if there’s anything that felt confusing to them. This will identify areas they haven’t fully comprehended and gives you the opportunity to clarify and make sure they understand.

Next, ask them comprehension questions about the content. Asking them open-ended questions about what they’ve learned will help you gauge their level of understanding. For example, if they’ve been trained on your policies for reporting a workplace accident, ask them to walk you through the process from beginning to end; this will give you an idea of what they took from the content and whether they’ve absorbed enough of the information to do their job effectively.

Comprehension is so important that you may want to take things a step further after an employee has completed a training program by quizzing them yourself on the knowledge they gained. You can easily create your own short quiz that covers or addresses all the information the employee has now learned in some way – Scenario questions that specifically relate to your business are great for this. If the employee answer to your satisfaction, make them take the training program again.

Having a follow up quiz on your training materials not only allows you to further check for comprehension, it also helps clear up misunderstandings in the future; if a team member claims they were unaware of a policy or procedure in your company, you can direct them to the test they took on the content and confirm they were trained on it.

Checking competency is so important because it protects the integrity of your training process. Effectively training your team is about so much more than a signature of completion. It’s about making sure that every person on your team has the knowledge and information they need to be successful in their role – and it’s about you as a business owner being able to rest easy knowing your team knows exactly how to do their job.

At LinkSafe, we’re committed to making employee training in Australia faster, easier, and more efficient. With our online induction training software, you can process inductees online from wherever you are – no need to be in the office. You can also request and record necessary paperwork and monitor employee and contractor progress – all from a platform custom branded to match your business.

Ready to get started? Get in touch with LinkSafe today to find out how we can make your induction training faster, easier, and more streamlined.