Employee training program (8)
As I am just building a team one of the big time consuming activities is creating systems and training them.
I noticed that replacemyself.com offers pre-made training for outsourced employees, however none of the modules fits for what I need to teach them.
Does anybody know a similar product to train employees? I handed them some STM threads, but I can't really go and say "take one week and read all STM posts" which is pretty much what I did to learn this. Also because they only need to know a small part of the whole business.
If there is none, would you be interested in a product like this?
Like a guide to AM specifically made for training employees from scratch and seperated into different positions.
The 6 weeks affiliate marketing course worked wonders for training my new employee.
Gave him to watch all the videos then followed by a week of questions to me was enough to bring him up to full speed.
When I built my first IT company I had the same problem. We had peaks of projects and work that needed to scale up the team quickly and having all the new members or freelancers in the same office wasn't always an option, so I decided to invest into a Quality Assurance consultant specialized in IT in order to speed up the training of my staff and make it work for people out of the office.
After a couple of months of work, everything, from the recruitment to the specific training for each person was documented and put into a training platform that allowed me to have well trained staff, with all the know how about our business and work methodology in no time and with very few hours invested from the existing team.
Basically, he analyzed my business and sit down with me to create a role oriented organization. A role would be "Layout Designer" or "Marketing Assistant", then each role would have assigned some responsibilities. The work of any role in an organization, even the sales people who tend to be more chaotic, can be structured as a set of processes and procedures. These processes and procedures can be easily documented, together with some business terminology and definitions into an Incorporation Manual, which is online, can come together with several exercises and makes hiring and training new staff much easier.
I also used that initial training as a filter, usually the guys that didn't go through it alone and where able to work immediately afterwards, didn't pass the test period.
The training methodology uses concepts from the training and appraisal program CMMI. Following its grading, the first stage is when your business is chaotic, there are not defined processes, everything is reactive. Level 2 is when you start managing some of the processes of your business, start defining them but they are often reactive. Level 3 is when all your processes are managed and the organization is proactive, not reactive.
A process is a sequence of tasks that lead to a singular result. Each task is defined as its high level result, that is one of the secrets of this methodology, don't tell your employees how to do things or what to do, tell them exactly the result you expect from them "Mobile Landing Page" is a much better process definition than "Create a Landing page" because it makes you define exactly what are the features of that result. There may be five different ways to design and build a landing page, doesn't matter really, as long as the result matches your requirements.
A procedure instead is a concrete way someone creates a result. If you hire an expensive developer you will not think about telling him how to code that tracking pixel, but if you hire low qualification or experience Virtual Assistants for example, you will want to spend some time defining the specific procedure on how to replicate a campaign, split test banners, etc. Step by Step, with screenshots, even videos. This way you get that knowledge out of your brain in a structured way an put it as an asset for your business, which can be used to train and scale your team.
I found the Private Corporate Wiki format the best tool for building these training platforms. It's collaborative but allows review and moderation. Tools like Confluence allow to embed BPMN diagrams for easy process definition, screenshots and other media and setting up that platform to hold all your valuable business knowledge can be done without any technical experience.
If someone had an Affiliate Training 101 for Employees put into a Wiki of that format I think that would be something very valuable for anyone in this industry struggling with building and scaling up a team.
I attach a screenshot so you can get an idea on how the system looked with some training documentation or even work requirements documented inside.
I think creating your own is the best move, that way you can make it exactly how you want it. A lot of training videos you get with leave out some hidden nuggets / not be relevant to what you need certain employees to do.
I personally create videos of me doing and explaining the exact tasks and upload them to my google drive (not shared with employee, different folder. That way they dont have to download it, it just works like youtube and you give them the link). I then have a document related to the overall task, with the video links in them. And then under the links I have some notes, if my employee asks me a question, I get them to put the question in the notes and my answer. Or if they make a mistake and I need to correct them, they put in the mistake they made and the correction I gave.
That way if I need to hire another person, all the documentation is in place.
Also something I forgot to mention and I've used in the past.
Hire your first guy and then outsource the training to him.
Once you have 2-3 trained guys then it all becomes easier.
What I learnt recently when hiring staff from the Philippines:
- Don't hire students - they try to work during the night, after Uni and it's just not sustainable - regardless what they say;
- Hire older workers and/or those who are married or have kids. They know the value of full time employment;
- Without a doubt, make them work during your hours!
- Use time tracking software in the beginning to keep track of what they're doing. For $10 p/m you'll be laughing all the way to the bank - http://www.timedoctor.com/
- As bbrock32 said, have a list of default tasks ready before they start. I found myself scrambling sometimes when I couldn't answer their questions fast and left them idle;
- probably and obvious one but I found giving them estimated times for each task helped keep them efficient and honest;
- I fired fast. Someone who lets you down once (i.e. not turning up on the agreed hours etc.) will generally do it again;
- Pay well above market rates for the 'team leader', then task them to find cheap, smart resource to undertake the basic work (again, as bbrock32 said);
- I went through about 8+ hires and eventually just added them to Skype and asked them questions to test their written English, and gave them a few tasks to go and solve online. i.e. research and comprehension;
** The tasks were related to link building, banner creating, WYSIWYG LP creation, spying and general admin stuff such as scraping, research etc. I published paid ads on the three PH sites mentioned in bbrock32s' presentation**
Hi kepe95, the 6WAMC might be a good start!
However, you will need to make additional material yourself for your specific business.
The good thing is, if you make training material a priority (and being self-contained for the most part), you will have a much easier time selling your business if it ever comes to that. People want a plug-and-play system, including documentation that shows the exact system you yourself (not your employees) follow. A lot to think about! 
I just want to add to what bbrock32 said. Train you guys to document and update your training if necessary. That way everything is systematized and your training library/system won't be bogged down with useless or outdated information.
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