Skill Fade – New Hire Onboarding

Many new employees may have already conducted several training pre-requisites prior to arriving at your worksite for day one. How long are your onboarding processes and how much information are you planning to deliver? I am sure it differs greatly between different organisations. Whether the role requires education, training or is unskilled will make a difference but there are certain aspects to arriving at a new workplace that are the same. Emergency procedures, locations of muster points etc. Other key factors are the risks, whether on the worksite, the role or both. One risk I do believe we fail to fully recognize is skill fade!

So, we bring in a new hire. I am sure the majority of good reputable employers have solid onboarding in place. The words training and competence are well understood. The question I pose though is have you over complicated the training program you are about to deliver? Research shows that up to 70% of knowledge or ability can be forgotten within 24 hours of learning. That sounds pretty scary but we can interject some realism. The skill fade is going to happen but the amount will vary. Much will depend on the employee’s previous experience, expertise and competence. How you deliver the training is also a key. Most will have heard the term death by PowerPoint?  PowerPoint is an outstanding delivery system especially if you have a cohort of new hires. We might recognize the risk of over use of PP but how often do you see slides absolutely crammed with words and even charts / tables? Do you look for Dyslexia, is English their first language and what’s their 3Rs ability? Ok, so arithmetic starts with an A but I hope I made my point?

The paragraph above opens a great opportunity for a deeper blog on training delivery. I do however plan to keep this very general. My aim being the ability to recognize skill fade as a real risk to both H&S and your production. If you spend 10 hours delivering your onboarding and even if 25% of the knowledge is lost then that’s 2.5 hours non-value-added time wasted. For those either driven by finances or lean then that’s going to hurt. A more important question is what knowledge did they lose? Is it a key control in safety such as the use of machine guarding or PPE? Is it a process step that could render your end product useless or dangerous?

Ok, there are businesses out there who’s training is somewhere between sub-standard and non-existent. The reasons are manyfold. The vast majority on my opinion however invest heavily. They invest in many hours of training time with dedicated trainers and professional presentations. Don’t get me wrong, I do know may orgs both big and small do a great job and are ahead of the curve when it comes to reducing the skill fade risk. Some however continue on, content with great compliance score often with a huge package of info. Their employees are ‘signed off’ and if and when things go wrong, they can load the accountability back to the employee. Another point I will make is this is often done in ignorance and not always due to cutting costs.

So, what are some of the factors that influence skill fade and what can we do to both recognize the risk in your business and reduce that?  Firstly, let’s look at some factors:

·         Employee experience level – are you actually refreshing or training from scratch?

·         Level of engagement – disengaged employees will take in less knowledge. Even those employees with experience. You paying bottom $$ or have archaic hours etc??

·         Training quality – is it delivered with aplomb? Key pieces reinforced and a thorough assessment of understanding completed?

·         Training delivery – death by PowerPoint? Overloaded slides etc? Do you have ‘hands on’ practices to bring all the words to real life?  A balance of skills-based vs knowledge based can cover far more employees learning strengths!

·         Time – how long since your employees last used the skills required or conducted any formal training?

·         Complexity and risk of the role – simple enough.

·         Psychological factors – bad practices from previous employers / workplaces / workers / mentors. The “We’ve always done it this way” culture whether current or previous.

·         Fatigue – a very valid factor that often discussed but often overlooked.

The bullets above are just few. There are many others. How do we minimize the risk of skill fade? My first priority would be to evaluate your onboarding program. Do you conduct any post training evaluations? Surveys and questionnaires can be effective. Don’t be generic. Ask for feedback on everything you delivered. Spend time introducing the evaluation, exactly what you want and give the reasons why.  Do you do follow up evaluations? Spend some time with the workers a few weeks later. You can and should use this time to give them some feedback. It may well be that from the information give the training is effective and efficient. Ask them for honesty and for their feedback as to whether they agree. A great question is what can we do better to improve the training and ensure new hires retain information and can conduct their work efficiently, effectively and safely. Providing feedback for evaluation is important. You can use your daily pre-shift meetings, safety meetings (weekly, monthly or JHSC) if you have them or worst-case scenario you could post notices (yuck).

One final addition to any training program should be the inclusion of education. A common question is what is the difference between training and education? Again, that’s another subject on my blog list as it’s something I believe in deeply. Adding reasons why to your training is a start though. I have stated the need to ensure slides are not over crowded with info and at times it’s a balance of quality vs quantity. Additional educational slides of reasons why we do thing a certain way or wear certain things help retain knowledge. Try to avoid the punitive reasons though!