A Prescription For Success: Treating Deficiencies In Employee Training And Mentorship

By Jenny Minigh, inSeption Group

Ask most companies, “how is your mentoring?” and, in their minds, they have effective training and mentoring support. And it looks like this: every year, employees complete goal-setting with management and, at the end of the year, they are graded on whether they met those goals. Success might mean a bonus, a raise, and/or a promotion.

But managerial support of strategic advancement up the career ladder is NOT the mentorship most people crave and need. In fact, what good is standing on the next rung if an individual doesn’t know what to do when they get there?

Unfortunately, most training these days has been reduced to self-study. But reviewing templates, guidances, and SOPs is NOT training. They are documents associated with processes to be followed for quality assurance. Click-read-sign training tempts employees to click, scroll to the bottom, and sign without absorbing the content — and it rarely has just-in-time applications.

For these reasons and more, investment in proper employee training and development is beneficial for employees and contributes significantly to the organization’s success and competitive advantage.