A modern workforce is likely to be distributed, busy, tech savvy and customer facing. Do you think it should be easier to connect with them? We do. We are hard at work breaking down barriers for companies to share information with their staff in a way that fits modern patterns of work and at the time it's actually needed.
The challenge of training frontline staff
When you offer your product or service through frontline staff you have to empower them to succeed.
Your workforce are likely responsible for selling a whole range of products and are expected to give outstanding customer service, acting as ambassadors for your brand.
At the same time, they’re a highly dispersed group. Spread out across a wide geographical area, constantly on the go and meeting customers.
So what’s needed is a way to ensure they have excellent product knowledge. That they are kept up to date on promotions and pricing and whatever else they need to deliver their best. It normally comes in the form of continuous training, keeping them at the peak of knowledge.
Moreover, you will want an environment where your employees are a natural extension of your company values and culture.
Traditional techniques to achieve this are outdated and ineffective. They include everything from in-person workshops, printed sales materials, WhatsApp groups and emails.
These methods are not scalable and they don’t ensure knowledge is actually retained.
The solution: relevant information at the point of need
Relevant information and up-skilling needs to fit around busy schedules and provide your workforce with immediate access at that point of need.
You need to make this information really accessible and engaging. Thus ensuring the relevant material is actually absorbed and adapted.
Bite-sized and focused training is our answer. It’s delivered straight to the users mobile phone with an intuitive experience making it simple to absorb knowledge and upgrade skills. This way of delivering training is sometimes referred to as microlearning. The benefit of using this approach is that you don’t need any experience to create effective learning content at scale.
With snappy, relevant updates you can inform your staff of new product launches, features, offers and promotions as well as share company news. This way you also create a handy knowledge base that replaces the need for printed material or reliance on face-to-face updates.
Vodafone, the Fortune Global 500 mobile operator is one company that has acknowledged the shift in working habits. They have a need to deliver the right information at the right time to their workforce. That's why they're using EduMe's learning platform to increase staff productivity.
Now that we’ve seen how to reach your distributed workforce, let’s look at practical tips for the type of information you can use to get your team delivering their best, no matter where they are.
Practical tips for aligning a dispersed team
1. Give your people an excellent grounding in the company and its story to develop loyalty.
This is a great place to add a personal touch. Replicate a face-to-face connection with short welcome videos from the General Manager or the Sales Area Manager.
Employees will feel proud to be part of the company and have purpose in what they do - increasing productivity.
2. Convey the values and culture of your company.
It is important to create excitement and a sense of belonging. Everyone of us has a set of values that we need to be understood and rewarded to feel happy at work. By sharing the values of your business you can connect with people in a manner beyond physical rewards.
You can also make staff feel part of something bigger than their daily workplace! Experts say that with irregular working patterns, making staff feel valued is critical to retaining them.
3. Provide the basics for new employees to hit the ground running.
We all know it can feel a bit overwhelming at the start of a new job. So keep this technical part short and focused on what people really need to know at the beginning of their journey. You will no doubt have piles of information that you need to share, but remember, less is more. Focus purely on what’s important and what anyone needs to know.
Having training based on mobile means you can quickly update and share new training. It also means you can distribute training only to those who need it.
By giving your workforce training they need, whether new or existing staff, they can see that they are achieving something - rather than just performing routine tasks.
Shorter chunks of information are easier to digest and have higher retention rates.
4. Little and often for continuous improvement.
Whatever the role, training and personal development should be a priority. It lowers the costs associated with poor service and retention of staff. And if delivered if the right way, it drastically lowers traditional training costs.
To maintain your level of service, keep team members up to date with regular training. It only needs to be short - but provides an ongoing reminder of how to succeed. And if your staff are succeeding, so are you.
You’ll have a motivated workforce with exceptional product knowledge and market-leading customer service.
