Never Train Your Employees Again

I never want you to train your employees again.

And while this seems antithetical to the advice I gave you last week to Stop Being the Bottleneck in your business, it’s actually the first step to taking yourself out of that position. 

In most organizations – companies, non-profits, even governments – there are people who know how to do all the things. They might be the founder, the CEO, someone who has been around for years or decades. And that person can be the ultimate middleman who insists all decisions go through them first. 

Successful organizations disperse information and decision making power to the people doing the work, with clear guidelines and policies to ensure things are done correctly. 

It’s your job to stop training new employees what those guidelines are and to document the way your business runs so you never, personally, have to train an employee again. 

This is a life-changing shift but it requires you to think about how your team works first and foremost. To do so, put yourself in their metaphorical shoes.

Imagine for a moment your circumstances have changed and you’re taking a new position with a company with whom you have never worked before. It’s your first day and you have your coffee and wonder what to expect. In the first hour you sit down and get all the essentials that you need to know: 

-how to track the hours you work and get paid

-how to apply for medical insurance, tax withholdings and time off

-where to park, the hours you’re expected to work, the command structure and how to make requests 

-company holidays, vacation time, sick leave and work from home policies

-policies on dress code, sexual harassment, moonlighting and selling your daughter’s Girl Scout cookies in the office 

All pretty reasonable, right? And if you’ve worked a corporate job you’ve probably had an introduction like this before.

Now imagine that your first day continues with that same step-by-step orientation to exactly how to do your job. Everything from the forms you need, the software loaded on your company computer and deadlines to who on the team handles graphics, the entire company brand guide and where the files are on the company intranet that you need to do your job. 

Wow – that would be incredible! 

Now consider if all of this was delivered with a series of training that did not require a person to sit there and teach you how it’s done. It’s documented and accessible 24/7 not just for the new hire, but for every employee to review and reference as needed. It’s accurate, detailed and interactive – you’ve not a teenager sitting in a closet watching VHS tapes about “the customer experience” at Blockbuster, you’re a highly trained and successful member of the team who has been given everything you need to do your job and excel. 

This training experience is bookended with a meeting with your supervisor where you can ask questions, get your first assignment and get to work. 

Large corporations should be doing this, they should be investing more in training which ensures consistency from their teams around the world, whether that’s IT, publicity or front line customer service. 

But even more so, small businesses and entrepreneurs need to develop these resources. Your business has so much more to lose when someone goes rogue and screws up. 

And I fully understand that no one wants to do this work and we reach for an easy answer: oversight. Thinking that if we just maintain constant vigilance then no one can ever screw up. And while management of your team is necessary, it’s a fool’s errand to assume that you can step back from doing all the things and instead watch what everyone else is doing with perfect results. 

It doesn’t work. 

When you do put in the time and care to build your systems for new hires and existing team members you get your time back and you’ll never have to train an employee again.