Lauren Farasati :: The Gifted Practice

It’s not sexy. It’s just essential.

I often joke that, contrary to popular belief, our industry does have a national employee training program – it’s called “Baptism by Fire”.  When it comes to training, we typically throw new people into the job and pray that they will be both smart and resilient.

How much could effective training improve your employee retention, client experience and your own peace of mind? Immeasurably, I suspect.  So here’s my method for killing two birds with one stone – training employees and capturing that training in a procedures manual.

Lauren’s Training Template

Whenever you’re doing a live training session with an employee, always train in this format:

• Subject – “Here’s what I’m going to teach you today”
• Resources – “Here’s what you need to perform this responsibility/task” (what forms, data, etc. you need to have in front of you)
• Steps – “The first thing you do is X, then step 2 is y…”
• Key contacts – “These are the people you can go to with questions – here, at the broker-dealer or insurance carrier level”
• Instruct the trainee to take notes in this exact format as you’re training
• Instruct the trainee to IMMEDIATELY type up the process in this exact format
• Review the documentation when complete, make necessary edits (explaining to the trainee what was missed or incorrect)
• Store the training on your server in a folder called “Procedures”

Training is a “currency” that retains great employees because it reduces frustrations, develops new skills and creates the “predictable practice” we all seek.  I’ve attached my training template and hope that you’ll start using it…on Monday!

This article was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 7:34 am.
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