Institute for Professional Care Education

Employee turnover is a fact of life, certainly in the senior care business.  If you’re really lucky, your biggest on-boarding needs aren’t related to turnover but rather to business growth.

Either way, you’ve got some training to do. And surprisingly, online learning can be your secret weapon to saving time and money with a super-fast on-boarding process. 

Here’s how:

- Start the training process before you sign the hire docs.  Some of our savviest clients assign a few training courses as part of their interview/hire process, seeing how well the applicant follows through and how well they score on competency tests.  If they’re hired, they’ve already completed a few of the new-hire courses and are ready to hit the ground fast.  Others assign courses to individuals immediately upon hire, encouraging them to start their online courses even before they come to their first day at work.  Often, the required orientation courses can be completed at the same time as the on-the-job orientation, preparing the worker for rapid assignments and full work loads.

- Save time and annoying repetition for yourself and key leadership team members.  If you’ve ever completed an in-person orientation 1:1, only to repeat it with another new hire a few days later you know what I mean.  This stuff gets old, especially when you have to repeat it with the same level of enthusiasm and energy over and over.  And if you, or another one of your high value employees (a nurse or team lead, for example) are doing training in groups of less than 5 or 6 you’re not getting a good value for your time.  Let your online training program do the repetitive on-boarding training of the core information, and you add the personal “welcome to the team” message tailored to each individual employee.’

- Do orientation and on-boarding on a 24/7 schedule.  Online courses are available anytime that works for the learner.  In fact, if you’re hiring a night shifter, perhaps their best time to learn is during that night shift.  Don’t try and stay awake to present it yourself – just sign her up for the online campus and hit snooze.

Unless you live in a world without turnout you’ve got to pay attention to thoroughly orienting and on-boarding all those new folks.  Do it right, save time and money, and preserve your own time for business-building activities no one else can do as well as you can do.  Use that online campus!