Starting a new job can be exciting, creating enthusiasm in the new hire and the employers. However, there is one pitfall that all parties in this situation hope/want to avoid …lack of training. Almost every person who has worked in the United States has been hired on, given the reins, and had no clue what they were supposed to do. It's frustrating and although most companies do implement training programs many use ineffective, inapplicable, or outdated training techniques. What then can companies do to better their training programs?

I received an answer to this quandary, this past week when one of my colleagues used Qualtrics, a market research online survey tool, to examine how effective his companies training program was. This software is designed and used by many different corporation for market research, but it transitions easily into an dynamic aide for human resources.

Not only did my colleague give his trainees a survey at the end of their training session to see how his company could improve the training, but he also tested how effective his training was by rigging the survey software to distribute a quiz. He's also planning to send a survey to the new hires, one month after they have been with the company, eliciting further suggestions for bettering their training program. Simply put, a great idea.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 20:27 CDT and is filed under market research, surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.