When new employees join an organization, the journey from a newcomer to becoming an experienced worker is not easy for them. At first, they are not aware of the culture of that particular workspace and how things work there. No matter how talented and intelligent they are, they won’t be able to express themselves freely in a new workspace. This is why it is important to uplift the skills of your new employees and make them capable of giving their 100% to the organization.
Why should you uplift the skills of your new employees?
You might wonder why I should uplift the skills of a particular employee when I have many other better things to do in order to take business success to new heights. Well, let us tell you why it is important for you, as a leader, to uplift your new employees.
- New employees are your future. You can’t work with the same people all over your life. This is why it is important to have a substitute before the experts leave your organization.
- You have hired them to yield some productive outcomes. Right? Well, they will be able to do that only if you make them capable of that.
- Without equal contribution by every member of the team, the success of an organization is not ensured. The new employees will be able to contribute productively right from the beginning only when you will uplift their skills.
- At first, the new employees might find themselves overwhelmed by their responsibilities. They might feel burdened or stressed. In such situations, they need someone who can uplift their skills and make them potential enough to deal with the situation.
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Best ways to uplift the skills of your new employees
There are many ways that can help you uplift the skills of your new employees. Here, let us tell you the 20 easiest ways.
1. Be there for them always
Well, we are not talking in personal terms, but we are talking in professional terms. When someone joins a new organization, he/she must not feel neglected. This is why it is very important to offer your maximum support to your new employees and assure them you will be there for them whenever he needs you. This will not only make the employees feel relaxed but also let them do things freely. You obviously don’t need to offer your support to them for a lifetime. In just a few months, they will automatically be able to do things on their own.
2. Check in with them regularly
Being in touch with your new employees regularly will also help you a lot to uplift their skills. This way you will be able to know whether your new employees are going on the right track or getting off it. If they are getting off track, you will be able to correct them by guiding them and suggesting ideas. Plus, you will also be able to know the skill levels of your new employees by staying in touch with them regularly in the initial days. Just in case you find that they lack somewhere, you can strengthen their skills before things can get worse.
3. Make them aware of the work culture
Every workspace has its own work culture and it’s your duty as an employer to make aware of your work culture to your new employees if you want them to give their 100% to your organization. Some organizations are very strict about their rules while some are a little lenient. So, new employees need to know the work culture of the workspace they are working in.
Just imagine if the new employees do not feel they fit in your work culture, how they would be able to perform the best. Given this fact, making them aware of work culture is very important in uplifting the skills of new employees, though not directly.
4. Give regular feedback
Be it a new employee or the experienced one, feedback to employees is very important in the growth of an organization because it’s only through the feedback employees would get to know what they are actually doing and whether it is productive for the organization or not. The thing becomes very important especially with the new employees because they are new in that workspace, and they need to learn many new things. So, make sure you give your new employees regular feedback and ask them to improve if they are required to in a polite manner.
5. Make them a part of the team
Working in a team opens the door to learning many new things for everyone. The reason is all the members of a team are definitely good at something. Given this fact, newcomers get to learn things practically from their team members. This is why it is important to put a new employee into a team. Don’t wait for them to get experience or become an expert in a particular task. Just make them a part of the team and they will gradually learn everything and become an expert. This will widen their horizons in not just a single thing but in different things at the same time.
6. Rewarding matters a lot
Here, with rewarding we don’t mean that you have to organize an event and then reward your employees. No. Here, rewarding can be in very little form but can go very far in terms of lifting the skills of employees. Your reward for new employees can be just praised for their skills or any quality that you like, or you can just clap for their achievements. This will encourage an employee greatly and he/she would be motivated to accomplish more by making efforts and uplifting his skills. So, be sure to recognize the accomplishments of your new employees and encourage them.
7. Appreciate the new employee
When someone is new somewhere, it takes time for him/her to learn things and do them properly. In this particular phase, a leader needs to appreciate everything they do and keep them encouraged to do more, of course, in a better way. If you keep pointing a finger or nagging at your new employees right from the beginning, they will feel annoyed and feel like quitting the work. This is why make sure to appreciate the work of new employees while asking them to improve so that they can hone their skills without getting irritated.
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8. Don’t overload them with information
If you expect your new employees to work like experienced ones, you are expecting too much from them. Because they have to learn a new work culture, new people, and new things other than just working. And, throughout all these things during the first few weeks, new employees would already feel under pressure.
So, it is a better idea not to overload them with unnecessary information. Just tell them the necessary information and try to keep their mind free. You can break the information into pieces and then tell them gradually as they proceed on. This way, they won’t be overwhelmed by the bulk of information and be mentally free to put their energy into the work.
9. Keep the partiality at bay
Partiality is the worst thing one can experience anywhere be it in a home, educational institute, or workspace. Nobody literally likes partiality. You might like your certain employees because of their extraordinary talents and skills. But don’t appreciate their skills in a way that others feel down or neglected. Appreciating someone’s skills is one thing and being partial is a completely different story. So, make sure to avoid this blunder and ensure a good workspace for your new employees where they can feel appreciated, noticed, and praised right from the beginning stage.
10. Don’t be dominating
If you really want to uplift the skills of your new employees and encourage them to achieve more and do the work in a better way, don’t be dominating. Definitely, you are the boss, and your employees would listen to you even if you tell them. But this is not the right way to get the work done. If you are bossy all the time, your new employees will feel intimidated and won’t be able to express themselves openly in front of you even if they’re right. This is why don’t be dominating. Maintain a good working spirit for new employees and walk ahead taking them along with you.
11. Set goals for them
Many times, employers make the mistake of not setting goals for new employees. They think only experienced employees can accomplish goals and new employees are there only to learn and do the basic-level things. This is the biggest mistake because it makes the new employees think that their skills are not being recognized and they are being taken for granted.
Given this fact, recognize the strong skills of new employees and then set the goals for them accordingly as you do for the experienced employees. It will not only encourage them to achieve their targeted goal but also give a feeling that they are being celebrated in the work organization despite being new.
12. Delegate a mentor to them
Here, we don’t actually mean that you need to find a mentor and delegate him/her to your new employees. Here, we actually mean that you can ask the senior members of the new employees to help the newcomer in every possible way and guide them wherever they need to. This way, new employees will excel at their work by developing new skills as well as getting to know their seniors in a better way. Not just that, it will also bring the junior and seniors closer, decreasing the gap between the designations.
13. Offer them resources
Balancing your own workload while simultaneously providing resources to new hires can be a challenging endeavor. Nevertheless, it is an important step in helping employees transition into their roles and gain the skills needed for success – such as being able to effectively find relevant information on their own. Instead of doing all the work yourself, provide direction by organizing sources so that newly onboarded personnel can have access when they need it. This will help ensure smooth integration and give them valuable knowledge acquisition expertise going forward!
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14. Offer them a digital course
“If you want to go a step ahead of your competitors by catering to your new employees with maximum care, offer them some digital courses that will definitely widen their horizons to a great extent.” – as explained by Tori Torn, the creative copywriter at Promova, in one of her recent articles.
Digital courses are simply a boon, not just for employees but for anybody because people get to learn some significant new things. Most of the time, organizations offer digital courses for free so that employees can benefit from them at the maximum. You can also make a free digital course available for newcomers and hone their skills on a big level. Everybody loves to explore new things. Given this fact, your new employees will definitely get to learn some new things from your digital course.
15. Give some time
Don’t expect your new employees to be as productive as the experienced ones. It takes time to learn new things and be adaptable to a new work environment. This is why give enough time to your new employees and allow them enough space as well so that they can come up with their creativity of minds freely and work without feeling under the limitations of time. You don’t really need to give them much time. In just a few weeks, they will be habituated to everything in your workspace, and you will be able to see that in the outcome.
16. Dare to experiment
This is one of the most important things to uplift the skills of your new employees. Sometimes what happens is that a person works for an organization for a long time in a profile he is not even an expert at. So, you need to experiment and find out the good skills of your new employees and offer them the job profile according to that no matter whether they have worked in that profile ever or not.
Your experiment can help your new employees discover a completely new skill about themselves which will definitely be beneficial to you as well. Don’t follow the standard approach that if a person was a manager in his previous job profile, he would serve you in the same role.
17. Offer opportunities to learn new things
The only way to hone your skill is to learn new things. isn’t it? So, if you want to uplift the skills of new employees, create such a workspace for them that they get to learn new things regularly in a direct or indirect way. For this purpose, you can conduct seminars, small events, get-togethers with like-minded people, or whatever suits you. Not everyone takes efforts on their own to learn new things. So, as the leader of the organization, it is your responsibility to offer such opportunities that your employees get to learn new things regularly.
18. Create a friendly workspace
When someone new joins you, it is very important to offer him/her a friendly atmosphere to live in. If your workspace is not friendly and everybody is being bossy there respective to their job roles, a new employee can never feel comfortable working with you, simply because he/she does not like the atmosphere. This is why you should create and offer a friendly workspace for new employees if you want to uplift them and get maximum outcomes from them.
19. Listen to them and showcase understanding
Unless you listen to your employees, you can never get to know their strengths, skills, demeanor, and weaknesses. Considering this fact, it is very important for a leader to listen to his new employees and try to find out their skills. If you don’t listen to them and just keep ordering, your work would definitely be done but you would fail to uplift your employees, which is a very important thing for a leader. Not just that, if you listen to your new employees attentively, they won’t feel hesitant to express themselves in front of you.
20. Share experiences
Nobody learns everything by doing it themselves practically. The same goes for the new employees too. They can’t learn everything by trying themselves. Here, the only thing that can help them learn those things without actually learning them is through the experience of others. Given this fact, experiences are very important. Share your own experience on some particular thing with your newcomers. Also, ask every member of the team to share practical experiences and help the new employees learn new skills.
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Conclusion
Whether it’s new employees or old ones, a leader’s responsibility is to uplift their skills whenever possible and help them professionally grow. We just talked about the 20 important ways that can help you uplift the skills of your new employees. But, of course, there are many other ways that can help with this.
Web Developer & SEO Specialist with 15+ years of experience in Open Source Web Development specialized in Joomla & WordPress development. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions".