Overall TIP: Build the confidence of your employees through effective training – the right training to the right person at the right time.
It is important when looking at future business development to consider how new technologies are integrated and adopted by employees. Lack of confidence and some knowledge can also restrict effective technological integration. Employee engagement is our buzz word as its essential for effective data, which drives better decisions which increases understanding and knowledge, and creates better engagement. In short, when we get it – we get it…
Confidence is a huge barrier to success. Self-doubt, fear and personal restrictions are something that can inherently disturb progress. Whether that be in a personal or professional setting – the key to success is confidence in the ability to deliver on a task. We believe this confidence can be brought to employees through effective and balanced training and education.
Although highly interwoven, there are clear distinctions to be made between what we define as education and training. Training is the “on the job” work, it is the demonstration and outline of managers on ‘How to…’ use the newly adopted technologies. Training is the vital first step, as it is the enrolment element. We believe managers must engage their teams in the bigger picture; the future progression they envision technology will enable for the company. TotalControlPro™ ensure they can support their clients’ team training through a combination on online and in house engagement training.
We know we can save 30 minutes per operator per day with our system, often simply because they now know much sooner the tasks and jobs they need to do and can access the information to do them better.
However, building the confidence of employees does not finish on only demonstrating the ‘how to’, it must continue to build and educate. Our education element is about helping employees understand the why – why is new technology necessary? Why will it help future progress and growth? Essentially, answering their question, “why should we bother?”
As Dolores Sanders highlights confidence building for employees is about the “Tell, Show, Try, Do.” Through engaging employees on the why and empowering them on the how, implementation of our technology will reap significant benefits for the productivity growth of our clients.
The more effectively or faster you train and educate the people involved in the productivity, the quicker you get to the benefits. But both must be taken in equal consideration. If you focus only on the how or the education (the why), this won’t have companies reach the “happy path to tech engagement.” Therefore, it must be a cohesive mixture of sharing and engaging employees. We found organisations prepared to share the win, win for everyone. This is part of the journey of success.
Total Control Pro™ are now expanding the training and education into our Employee Management System – where we can link employee skills to work task assignment, and trigger reminders for retraining and updates. Just one of the many steps to an Engaged and empowered workforce.
What about the Future?
Here at TotalControlPro™ we recognise the importance of not only educating our current workforce but paving the way for the future employees across the manufacturing industry. Out of our team of sixteen, five employees are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, “we are absolutely keen to nurture those new skills and taking that on board” (Dolores Sanders, Founder and Strategic Director). Our partnership withhas seen Dolores travel to primary and secondary schools across the country to inspire the next generation and encourage more students into STEM whether that’s in further education or apprenticeships. Through these visits, Dolores states “I get to see what the conversation is around entrepreneurship and around business. But they are also the future of the workplace. At TotalControlPro, our technology has a focus on engaging our workforce and capturing the engagement of the shop-floor. A lot of people I am speaking to are going into that environment and they’re the people we are building products for in the future. I need to know, what are the conversations they are having and what are the opportunities that they see and how can we capture that?” We are committed to not only inspiring the future generations, but also listening to them and their needs and ensuring we deliver on those needs.
It is vital to reveal to pupils their opportunities and possibilities in a huge array of businesses and industries. Through these visits Dolores also receives insights into pupil’s ecosystems, “So, who inspires them around them right now? And most of the time they don’t have access to that, they don’t have access to the kind of people who can inspire them and give them a chance to lift their heads up above the parapet and see that there is another conversation.” As part of celebrating International Women’s Day and women in technology in Northampton, we showcased at the Metro Bank. As part of the trailblazers’ tour, we gave people young and old the opportunity to track how long they could build a Lego Ferrari. Through gamification and bringing fun to new technology, young people can view their own potential. It was an amazing opportunity to see both boys and girls, as young as four years old using the same technology applied in cutting edge manufacturing plants, having fun and understanding the importance and use of such software.
Schools have the opportunity to unlocking the culture of entrepreneurship and changing the decisions and aspirations of young people. Having those from industry come in to speak, inspire and engage with young people can rapidly transform the nature of our skills gap and bring greater diversity into all areas of business. It has been revealed that involvement into STEM triples after just three encounters with individuals who inspire them in the industry, Dolores remarks, “Where we bring our ideas and our vision in, it gives them the opportunity to see things differently as well, which is what innovation is all about!”
Jasmine Smellie _ Marketing