As an employer, department head, or other position of leadership, you naturally want your coworkers and subordinates to be as prepared as possible. While this obviously includes the basic functions of the position, there are skills beyond the rudimentary job description that warrant the same level of training. Whether you’re running a nonprofit, a retail chain, or other type of organization, every employee should be trained to perform these tasks effectively.
CPR Training
Health emergencies can happen anywhere, including the workplace. Having employees trained in CPR can mean the difference between life and death as it will give them the skills needed to handle cardiac emergencies. You should integrate this training as part of a larger plan, providing employees with a list of health and safety contacts, collecting emergency contacts for each associate, and other practices. Employee CPR training classes can be held on-site, saving your workers the trouble of finding their own safety courses. The group training experience doubles as a way to bond employees, giving it an extra benefit.
Public Speaking
This skill is a common phobia for many, but it’s one that’s necessary for your employees and business as a whole to succeed. Communication is the foundation of success, whether internal or with your business’s customers. Speaking in front of groups will build your employees’ confidence and can help you to solidify your business’s corporate culture and overall tone, helping to keep a consistent message. The workplace provides the perfect place for this type of training, as even those most apprehensive towards public speaking will have some comfort starting out in front of small groups of their peers before using these skills in front of customers.
Time Management
In both your professional and personal life, there is no resource more important than time. For businesses, using time effectively is so serious an issue that it even led to the development of the concept of time theft, the idea that employees who waste time on personal concerns during working hours are effectively stealing from the company. While this may be an extreme perspective, the basic idea that employees should be trained to maximize how they spend time on the clock is worth exploring. Training your employees to manage time effectively can simply mean teaching them simple tricks like keyboard shortcuts, or larger measures like time-tracking software to add a layer of accountability.
Anti-Phishing Education
Regardless of your computer network’s firewall or individual computers’ antivirus software, Internet safety ultimately rests with the users. Phishing, an act in which malicious individuals or groups seek out users’ personal and financial info, is one of the most common forms of attack and one that faces businesses and organizations regardless of their size or purpose. To protect your employee information and your organization’s computer hardware, financial data or transactions, and intellectual property, all employees should be trained in the basics of anti-phishing.
Typing and Word Processing -- Keyboarding
Given the role computers play in practically every job environment, your employees should be trained to handle computer tasks in a time efficient manner. One of the most basic of these is how to properly use a keyboard. Pressing keys with the index finger one at a time might be fine for simple web browsing, but when it comes to more involved tasks like data entry or word processing, countless hours are lost every week by employees who don’t know their way around the keyboard. A simple typing course will improve your employees’ keyboarding proficiency, and can even prevent the development of carpal tunnel, arthritis, and other conditions that can develop from the small, repeated motions required of a desk job.
Practice Makes Perfect
Your employees’ performance ultimately hinges on how well they are prepared. Whether it’s communication and customer service, getting PCI-DSS training, or even emergency preparedness, general tasks are just as important training topics as role-specific demands. Training your employees for a variety of basics tasks will enable them to handle a broader range of situations, requiring less oversight on your part and fostering a spirit of personal responsibility and commitment among your employees.
Latest posts by Dixie Somers (see all)
- 3 Ways To Avoid Discrimination In The Workplace - October 30, 2018
- Taking Chances: Risk Assessment Tips for New Businesses - February 22, 2018
- 5 Essential Tasks Every Employee Should Be Trained to Do - October 24, 2017
