Adopting new technology is exciting. Maybe it’ll save costs. Maybe it’ll improve efficiency or let you achieve new things you couldn’t before. As a business owner, that’s how you think, but it’s not how your team feels about change.
They mostly worry about using and integrating a new system into their workflow.
You can’t blame them either since new technology is often disruptive. Your team will take time to transition to a new system—that’s natural and inevitable.
But if you don’t help guide this transition by actively providing training, you’ll make it costly.
Keep reading to learn how not training your employees affects their ability to work and how you can fix it.
What Happens When you Don’t Train your Team?
Suppose you invest in a new state-of-the-art Content Management System (CMS). It has all the latest features and promises to double your marketing team’s productivity.
Let’s say it delivers on these features, and a skilled marketing team could increase productivity by using it, but your team doesn’t.
Instead, the exact opposite happens. The first month comes in, and your marketing team’s productivity actually declines. They produced lower-quality content behind schedule and took more time doing it than usual. Why is that?
It’s because they weren’t adequately trained with the new technology.
Without teaching them how to use the new CMS and slowly integrating it into their workflow, it became a disruption, and as a disruption, it had the opposite of its intended effect.
1. Lost Productivity
Another consequence of being unfamiliar with new technology is losing the productivity they would’ve had if you hadn’t introduced the new platform.
Suppose your marketing team normally generates around 100 inbound leads a month.
Thanks to not adequately training them to use their new CMS, they’ve only generated around 70 leads for the month. That’s 30 inbound leads worth of productivity you’ve lost simply from not investing more in training your employees.
That’s not even mentioning the potential productivity loss if your team used the new system effectively. Say the new CMS should have increased your monthly inbound leads to around 120.
Now you have a lost potential productivity of 50 inbound leads you could’ve had if you invested in your team.
This lost productivity also naturally translates into lost revenue and business opportunities.
2. Expensive Mistakes
Mistakes in the workplace are inevitable, but they become more frequent with unfamiliar technology. These mistakes could include entering the wrong data or misplacing important files. The result of these avoidable errors is the loss of time, energy, and money.
Being unfamiliar with the new CMS, your marketers might accidentally input the data of the wrong ad campaign into the system. The result is an ad campaign that doesn’t generate the ROI it should’ve had the right data been entered.
That also means whatever amount you invested in your ad campaign ultimately goes to waste.
As a business owner, you want a smooth and predictable workflow with as few problems as possible. Some mistakes here and there, sure. You can’t stop that. But you don’t want an entire team experiencing an upsurge in preventable mistakes because they weren’t trained enough.
These mistakes could even lead to non-monetary long-term harm like reputational loss from showing the wrong audiences your ads.
3. Morale Loss
Employees who are frustrated with the new system may lose morale. The result of this will be a noticeable decline in workplace satisfaction and productivity. In their frustration, your employees might avoid using the new system entirely and cling to the old one, negating the benefits of investing in the new system.
Your team works best when they have defined and predictable workflows. Without a smooth transition to the new workflow, your employees will also experience multiple other negative emotions: stress, feelings of being lost, unproductive and undervalued.
The effects could potentially be so bad that they transform your once productive office into a negative work environment. You might even see a rise in employee turnover.
To maintain company morale, your employees need familiar and predictable systems. Some amount of morale loss is inevitable from adopting a new technology, but you can minimise its effects by training your team.
4. Shadow IT
Shadow IT is when employees use unauthorised tools and systems instead of those you’ve prescribed because they’re unable to use the new system.
The negative effects of Shadow IT include undermining your investment in the new system, security risks from using unauthorised applications, and potential productivity disruptions in your workflow.
Ideally, your employees should only use authorised applications and systems since they carry the least security risk and create an integrated workflow for your company.
Shadow IT is also undesirable since it undermines your company’s management ability. Ideally, your company should have the competence to provide the right tools to employees to finish their tasks.
5. Resistance to Future improvements
A single negative experience with a new technology may convince employees to be sceptical or resistant to any future changes. They may feel that new technology will inherently be disruptive and create problems for the workplace.
The result of this attitude is that you’ll have considerable difficulty in introducing future innovation. Without being able to readily adapt to new market trends, your business will also lose its market competitiveness.
Not being willing to adopt new technology is especially undesirable in today’s rapid pace of change. With a workforce that’s resistant to new developments, you’ll struggle to remain relevant.
This will be an especially big problem if you operate in an industry with a fast pace of change, such as software development.
In fact, having a company culture that’s generally resistant to change is so detrimental it will inevitably translate to long-term revenue and opportunity loss.
How Can You Fix It?
Now that you know the problem with not training your team to use new technology, here are the solutions:
1. Invest in Comprehensive Training
Don’t assume a tool is easy enough that anyone will understand how to use it. It may even be true for most of your workforce, but it’ll almost never be true for all. Instead, expect some degree of training to always be necessary to bring your team up to full speed.
So you should invest in comprehensive training. It should include everything from how to use the new tool to what not to do and address common questions and problems.
You can provide this with video tutorials, workshops, and written guides.
The goal should be to cover every consequential aspect of using the new application. Your training approach will be successful if your team has minimal issues adapting to the new system by the end.
Of course, some difficulty in adapting is inevitable, so don’t assume you’ll have no problems. Providing comprehensive training minimises the problems you’ll experience.
2. Prioritise User Adoption
Your training should be ‘user-centric’. For instance, don’t simply explain that the new CMS can auto-publish social media posts. Instead, focus on how the employees will only have to input a schedule and the system takes care of the rest.
Employees don’t need to manually publish social media posts any more. So, they benefit from the new system since it reduces their workload.
You should also emphasise the specific benefits your team will get instead of those the business as a whole will receive. Your team will be far more enthusiastic about knowing their workload is reduced than about knowing the company saves on costs.
Prioritising the benefits of your new system to users helps adoption because it incentivises them to adopt it. Focusing on user benefits also gives employees a reason not to remain with the old system.
Ideally, you want to present such a compelling case of the benefits of the change that your team enthusiastically adopts the new system right away.
3. Accept Change Management
Whenever possible, communicate why your company is introducing a change. Doing so helps your team understand why they should adopt the new tech. It’s also an effective way to explain how they will benefit from the change.
For example, maybe you’ve adopted the new CMS because it will improve efficiency by 30% and reduce your team’s workload by another 20%. This is a clear and justifiable reason to change the system.
Providing this explanation gives your team a reason to embrace the change and accept that it’s ultimately for their benefit.
Consequently, when you don’t provide an explanation for changes, your team may feel alienated and controlled from above. They may not like the disruption to their workflow without a proper explanation of why the change was necessary.
You Don’t Need to Do It Alone!
You need to train your team to use new technology effectively. Without it, they’ll become frustrated, lose morale, and make expensive mistakes. Even worse, they might refuse to use the new system altogether.
Providing adequate and comprehensive training isn’t always easy, especially if you already have a busy schedule. You can always outsource your training needs to a managed service provider (MSP).
Click here for a free consultation with PowerbITs, and we’ll help you train your team.
