Have you ever had a job where there wasn't any training? I have. Once I had a job and didn't get told where the bathroom was. It felt weird to ask, "Where is the restroom?". It was at that time that I told myself I would NEVER have anyone on-board without some basics for them to have the best first day ever. Here are three reasons why training matters in your small business or nonprofit.

ON-BOARDING CONSISTENCY
On-boarding should be a formal process to convey the values and culture of the organization. Each employee should be provided the same information so that they all have the same grounding as they enter the organization. Employees are deciding if this will be a good fit from the beginning. Many employees may have left a organization and/or job they loved, but you offered them a promotion or opportunity they were seeking. Make sure you are able to meet them where they are at and start to build community so they want to stay. Through the consistent on-boarding practice employees will have a sense of stability and safety to learn their own role in the organization.

COMPLIANCE IS IMPORTANT
Yep, employees can bad talk all the orientation required to start a new position, but your organization is on the line that your employees know what is expected and are compliant. Compliance is HIPAA, OSHA and many more government mandated compliance. The new compliance that your employees need to know about cybersecurity and their role in reducing it at your organization. Make sure your have annual training that refreshes your employees of all expectations you have around sexual harassment, discrimination and other items that may be grounds for termination if found the employees aren't compliant.

EMPLOYEES CAN DO THEIR BEST 
Individuals learn differently, written, hands-on or oral. Make sure your training offers different modalities so that your employees will have an opportunity to use their learning strengths. In the tight workforce right now, I know the burden that training can put on managers. Managers should think through how to scale up the training to get employees going but also have balance with their responsibilities and getting the new employee up and going. If your processes aren't written down, this is your first step. Have employees write what they do so you will always have a position "handbook". Make sure you know where this is saved and/or periodically get a copy of it. Back to my on-boarding where there was no training, I survived and I learned to do my job networking with resources and making mistakes. I know that this wasn't efficient and I also know that not everyone would have worked through it. Commit to train your employees with the basics and then support them to success.

Does performance matter post pandemic? It should. As a leader during the pandemic, I was leading a team of 23 employees virtually through the pandemic and the unrest in Minnesota. I had to shift old ways of thinking about performance to ensure our employees felt safe and were given the flexibility to get their job accomplished. This meant that hours of work weren't only 8:00 am - 4:30 pm and we came together as a team to support each other to ensure our stakeholders had what they needed to do their jobs.

We are now in 2023 and with the workforce gaps, I know it is easy to let performance slip, especially on the employees that have stayed with the company through the ups and downs of the past few years. If you don't have a performance management system, I am going to encourage you to have one. If you have a performance management system, but have put it on the bottom of the TO DO list, I am going to encourage you to set aside time to launch it again. If you have maintained your performance management system through the ups and downs, kudos to you!

Here are the three reasons why I am encouraging all businesses including small businesses and nonprofits to have a performance management system.

RETAIN HIGH PERFORMERS 
There is nothing worse to be a high performer on a team where there are no written expectations and mediocre is the highest praise. What I mean is the lowest denominator of an employee should not be the standard so that there is no recognition for people who go the extra mile. There should be some core expectations that all employees MUST comply with to maintain their good standing. So many times in my career employees may be having issues with performance but there wasn't a good infrastructure to determine where were the barriers so the performance wasn't improved. Others who were able to perform would then not be given recognition for their work outcomes. A good performance management system will solve both scenarios of the performance issues being resolved and the high performer obtaining recognition.

MAINTAIN PRODUCT / SERVICE QUALITY
When performance management isn't valued at a company it will start to show with the level of service and/or product quality. Recently I heard a story about the quality of a auto mechanic shop that used to be top-notch, but had slowly declined. When the customer identified that their battery had died on the road and there were visual signs the battery wasn't good, but their recent service check said it was ok, they wanted to know if the mechanic had seen the problem. Instead of empathy for the car owner, the manager told the car owner this wasn't their issue. The car owner should have known their battery was old. When I heard this story I wondered if the manager was frustrated by not being able to maintain a level of performance with their mechanics. The long-term customer is considering taking their business somewhere else because this has broken their trust with this company's leadership and performance. A good performance management system would allow management to identify performance issues that are directly impacting product / service quality by utilizing customer feedback and/or peer feedback.

SUCCESSION PLANNING
Turnover is hard on an organization both from a change management and financial prospective. Many organizations haven't built a culture where people can grow within the organization because of other priorities on the business. Without a good performance management system you can't identify which employees need coaching and which ones aren't going to work out. However, when you have an organization that has been able to identify performance issues and work to resolve them, you will start to have your employees wanting to stay around longer. Employees may find themselves in seasons where they aren't performing at their best maybe due to personal life issues, but when they know their company has the tools and resources to help them through the season, they will build loyalty. A performance management system will also identify areas where employees are performing well and this could open up growth opportunities within the organization. When they become managers, they will be able to lead like they were led. 

So what is a good performance management system that I have been talking about? Is a system that allows both managers and employees to set goals, schedule periodic check-ins to review goals, obtain coaching opportunities, have an established basis for termination and an overall performance metric each year for bonuses and/or other benefits.