Are You Sabotaging Your Own Employees Training?

The growth of online learning has been staggering within the multifamily industry, and more and more companies seem to be realizing the potential.  However, I hear too many stories of companies sabotaging their own employees’ training.

One of the great benefits of online training is that it is self paced and convenient.  I don’t think it can replace in person training, but I think it provides a convenient and time efficient way to learn critical skills and ideas.  However, this convenience allows for it to be abused in many ways, as supposedly “urgent” issues often interrupt this critical training. 

When we send our employees to off-site training, it is understood that they are unavailable and the rest of the staff is expected to hold down the fort.  Only in extreme cases are employees pulled away from off-site training to handle a crisis.  And you know what?  Somehow they seem to get by!  But it often doesn’t work like that with on-site training.  I hear stories all the time about how the employee was pulled away from the training to handle some issue, simply because the employee was present in the community.  Why does the community’s ability to cope without that employee change when they are doing on-site online training versus off-site training?

What happens when you get pulled away from training over and over?  It becomes significantly less effective!  Learning requires a certain element of concentration, so constantly getting pulled out of the learning mentality makes it significantly more difficult to obtain and retain ideas.  What’s the point of training your employees if you are making it that much more difficult for them to digest the information?

The second major issue with online training is the scheduling itself!  Training is investment in that employee to become a stronger leaser, a better manager, or more effective in some other area of their job.  But how many companies require the employee to take online training during their off hours?  Granted, employees also benefit from this training, but it is the company that employs that person, so they are first in line for reaping the rewards of those additional skill sets.  I firmly believe that each employee should have a “budget” of hours per month to spend on training that are during work hours, not hours that they should be spending with their families.

So the question is, are you doing things to enhance your employees online training, or are you sabotaging it with a lack of support?