Find new development paths for your employees
It can be difficult to set assign time for learning and development. Finding easy ways to naturally learn in daily work is a goldmine for development as it can be difficult to prioritise major training initiatives in the middle of rolling production.
For more extensive training, validation of skills and continuous performance reviews are your best tools. They help you see specific needs clearly and allow you to invest in the right training for the right employees.
Mentor/teacher
Let more experienced employees teach the new ones to spread smart solutions and effective practices. This could be someone “new to the job, “new to an area” or “new on a machine”. Learning while doing saves time, empowers the trainer and can often lead to natural improvements in procedures and processes through questions and curiosity from the person coming in with fresh eyes.
Test new ways of working
Do not be afraid to test new ways of working. Involve your employees, capture creative suggestions and allocate responsibility for experimenting with solutions and ways of working where possible. Set up procedures to monitor and evaluate what works well and what does not. Spread the knowledge and continue using what works.
Feedback
Help yourself and others to develop by giving and asking for feedback on things you do, or are learning. By not being afraid to listen to constructive feedback, you will gain new insights, advice and opportunities for improvement and development. Be sure to always focus the feedback on actions and behaviours – not the person.
Inspiration
Get new impressions, trends and useful information by reading articles or books, visiting chat forums, and attending lectures or events on interesting topics. Involve your employees by taking shared responsibility for these different channels of information and for spreading what you can all benefit from by speaking at meetings, sending out information and so on.
Invite experts
Learn from how others have done things, update yourself on important information or listen to the latest trends in the sector by inviting people to your company. At weekly meetings or the like that you already have scheduled, seize the opportunity to gain new knowledge and information easily.
Validation
Validation shines the spotlight on skill sets you currently have and enables you to better use and develop them through targeted skills development. The basic concept of validation gives you a clear indication of the minimum level of skills required to work in industrial production. From this basis, you can develop your employees in a quality-assured, defined and essential way.
More about validation at Svensk industrivalidering (in Swedish)
Follow-up
Ensure that you get the desired effect from development efforts through follow-up, preferably on multiple occasions. See whether it provided the desired skills enhancement and whether lessons learned are used in daily work and disseminated among colleagues. o get an objective picture, ask the immediate manager to evaluate the impact.