Americans hold an average of 12 jobs during their lifetime. A change in a person’s career, whether a promotion, a lateral move or a fresh start at a new company, could require a lengthy training period. Organizations feel the strain of new employee onboarding and often look for ways to streamline the process and ensure talent retention.
Large employers such as Google, Amazon and Walmart spent an average of 38.8 hours training a new employee in 2019. Coincidently, 67.9 million Americans parted ways with their employer that year. While employees leave their jobs for various reasons, a lack of communication between employees and organizations reigns supreme. The past and present labor market challenges, such as remote work environments and high turnover rates, reinforce the importance of employers spending more time on employee success. In 2020, large companies (over 10,000 employees) increased training by 164% signaling an investment in employee retention and understanding of employee needs.
Although employee training has increased, organizations are inundating employee calendars with a series of one-on-one meetings and pre-recorded training sessions. While meant to help new employees adapt to company culture, build employee relationships and work more productively, these methods often leave employees feeling ill-prepared and overwhelmed, prolonging their overall time-to-train. HR leaders can pair in-person training with virtual training via remote visual assistance software to improve new employee onboarding, decrease time-to-train and positively influence their abilities to perform in their role.
Improve New Employee Onboarding
The Felder-Silverman model looks at individual learning styles and their impact on retention, including what is read, heard or seen. According to the study, an employee retains 30% of what is seen and 50% of what is heard. However, when given the opportunity to teach and practice, retention increases to 90%. When used as a new hire training tool, remote visual assistance can increase an employee’s ability to comprehend tasks and improve their on-the-job performance.
Augmented reality-enabled technology is easy to use, portable and requires no proprietary hardware. Employees can receive unambiguous, hands-on learning and immediate, constructive feedback from their peers. By doing so, remote visual assistance technology eliminates unnecessary training methods and opens availability to proactively and reactively train on an employee’s terms. Not only does this influence time-to-train and employee ability, but it improves the new employee onboarding experience as well.
Decrease Time-to-Train
In any organization, employees seek human support to execute their work accurately and efficiently. However, successfully equipping new employees with hands-on training while avoiding meetings and modules can be challenging. HR departments using remote visual assistance software can leverage the technology’s AR features to provide a practical training experience and decrease time-to-train without the need for traditional training methods.
The “ride along” is a traditional training method that pairs a new employee with an experienced employee. This method invests in hands-on training of a new employee for several months and increases the overall time-to-train. Remote collaboration decreases the ride along time by putting new employees into a productive role sooner and provides the new employees with immediate access to an expert for additional on-the-job training when they need support. Not only does remote visual assistance software decrease the time-to-productivity, but it encourages employees to provide a better customer experience and generate revenue faster.
While the technology aims to eliminate meetings and in-person training, remote visual assistance software still preserves mentorship. By leveraging visual, non-verbal cues from an organization’s experts, employees can work more effectively, retain information better and feel empowered to help their peers. Remote visual assistance technology is quickly and easily becoming a foolproof method for organizations to decrease time-to-train, increase training retention and support productivity.
Influence Employee Abilities
Remote visual assistance software is an effective tool on its own. However, pairing the technology with an organization’s learning management system (LMS) helps positively influence employee abilities by providing a location to revisit training sessions and perfect skill sets. When faced with a difficult task, employees can deploy the software, either on its own or with an existing LMS, to connect and learn “on-the-job.” By doing so, employees are more confident in their abilities and overall performance.
When employees are confident, they are less stressed in their day-to-day workload, are generally higher performers and are more likely to maintain loyalty to their current employer. In fact, 96% of workers said they’re more likely to stay at a company if they feel confident in their roles. Providing employees with the tools they need, including remote visual assistance software, to successfully onboard, consistently improve their abilities and maintain a good performance is key to an organization’s success.
On average, companies spent $1,111 per employee for new hire training last year, according to The Industry Report. While abandoning traditional training practices and migrating to a new onboarding process can be intimidating for organizations, adding new technology, like remote visual assistance, can significantly reduce costs, improve the onboarding experience, decrease time-to-train and positively influence employees’ ability to succeed.
