Many employers and employee development professionals have a bit of a bias toward focusing training efforts on younger employees—at the expense of older workers. In yesterday’s post, we discussed a few reasons why this may be a big mistake:
These reasons were discussed in an article for Industrial Distribution by Joe Humphries titled “How to Retain Older Employees.” In the article, Humphries offers four tips on how to approach that training, which can sometimes be met with a certain amount of resistance. “It may be difficult to explain to older employees why you’re re-training them,” he writes. “They may think that they’ve done something wrong to elicit a training session, or they may see the training session as a punishment.”
Explain Why You’re Retraining Them
There are many good reasons for training older employees. Make sure they are aware of them. It’s not punishment. It’s not a blanket policy they are being swept up in. It should be intended to provide value to them and the organization.
Ask What They Know
Many older employees have a wealth of experience from years in the industry, independent study, learning from peers, etc. Don’t assume you know what baseline of knowledge they are starting with. See where they are at already, and then tailor your training to that starting point.
Get Back to Basics
It’s important to remember that it may have been a long time since your older employees were trained on some of the basics. Over time, things may have changed dramatically, making what they think they know obsolete. It doesn’t hurt to revisit some of the basics as a starting point. Obviously, if the material is well-understood, it can be covered briefly.
Go Over New Training Material
In many organizations, training is done early on in an employee’s career and then discontinued. That doesn’t mean, however, that all employees have received the same training. There may have been many updates and revisions to training material. Share these updates with all of your employees.
Older employees are potentially great assets for any organization. In yesterday’s post, we discussed why it’s a mistake to overlook their training; here we looked at some tips on how to approach that training to both make it effective and avoid sending the wrong message to your trainees.