When explaining new tasks, most supervisors concentrate too much on the specifics of the task and not enough on how the task fits into the overall process flow of the company. There will be no additional context given as to the specific task being trained, only that the employee has shown an understanding of how to complete the new task.

Give your employees context as to how their positions fit into the overall company. Typically most companies try to do this with new employees by walking them around the office on their first day/week on the job, introducing them to the heads of other departments and other important contacts and think that will be enough context for the new hire.

Unless the new employee’s position frequently interacts with those other departments and contacts, those first-week orientation meetings will fade from the employee’s memory quickly. When you add in the fact that the employee is feeling the stress of trying to succeed in a new position, it’s hard to expect a high level of retention of anything but the most primary of information at the beginning of an employee’s service time with the company.

When training an employee for either a new position or new tasks, first imagine that you're looking through the eyes of every process owner in every department that interacts with the processes that this employee is responsible for. From a process-flow standpoint, you need to provide the employee with a general understanding of the processes that are both one step before and one step after the specific process that the employee is responsible for.

How does this other department (or other team member within the department, depending on the process flow) interact with this employee’s position? Which positions will interact with them on the process in question? What are their expectations? How have these departments/employees interacted in the past in this process, and how could the interaction be smoother or combined with another process to gain increased efficiencies?

After providing the details of the particular task or process, it’s critical to also explain in a general context the process immediately before the specific process or task (i.e. upstream) and after (i.e. downstream). Advise the employee being trained on the who/what/where/why/when/how of the positions that interact with the specific process both before and after.

For upstream processes where another department or employee within the same department handles a project/task/service ahead of the employee's specific process, what are they doing? Why are they they're doing it?

For downstream processes, how does the next department/employee handle the work product? Why do they need it in a specific format? When do they need it? Is it a component of another process? Will it eventually be combined with multiple processes to create a larger work product?

Typical Training: A Receptionist will be trained on how to greet guests in person/on phone, how to sort mail, and how to enter meetings into the corporate calendar.

Better Training: In addition to the basic processes that the position is responsible for, the Receptionist is also trained on the primary methods the company uses to get customers. The demographic and/or certain traits for typical customers that the receptionist will interact with is discussed. There is a detailed discussion about how the work product of the position is used by the other departments (ex: what other departments do with mail documents after routing).

Metaphorically, an employee that’s trained on a specific task or process in a vacuum is akin to someone trying to go through life only looking at their shoetops. They don’t have any field of vision; they might not run into anything, but they really don’t know where they’re going. How motivated do you think employees trained on only the specifics of their tasks would be?

Providing employees with the upstream/downstream context of their tasks and processes will speed up their learning curves, which will then lift their metaphorical field of view from their shoetops to the horizon, meaning they can innovate on their assigned processes and provide additional value to the company in a far shorter timeframe.

An additional benefit of providing the larger context during training is that it will show that the company values the employee and desires to see them succeed in their role(s), which will provide additional motivation. Another benefit of a wider field of view is better cohesion between departments and proactive problem-solving by the lower-level staff that are actively performing the tasks day-to-day. 

A person must have the internal desire and motivation to learn in order to actually learn. You could be the best instructor in the world, but if you are trying to teach a student that’s indifferent, you’re going to waste a lot of time and energy. The only students that benefit from the instruction are those with the desire to learn that task at that moment.

If you feel that the employees that you’re training might not be motivated or willing to learn, reinforce the fact that their job performance will be judged on their effectiveness in performing their new task(s) effectively.

In a person’s career, being knowledgeable or technically proficient about a task/process in a given field will get you only so far. If you're not able to train, develop, and make other people better within an organization you will not show that you are “promotable” and ultimately stall out as only a technician. You might even make it to middle management in larger organizations with some staff reporting to you, but they will be self-lead and self-motivated because you haven't shown the aptitude to develop and mentor others.

The process of training employees on the larger context of the “why” in their tasks and processes will weed out the ones that are just going through the motions…. the ones that don’t really care how the chocolate factory works; they only want the candy bar. They will begin to drag their feet because they don’t care about becoming better at performing their jobs and learning new skills, because that takes them outside of their comfort zones and creates a “pain” that they’re not willing to endure.

Depending on the size of the organization you’re in and the level of staff that you are trying to train, you might not have the luxury of having motivated students...the realities of business might dictate that you need to develop the staff that you have on hand at the current time, whether they are motivated or not.

The staff that you are training will either walk with you or be carried (at times) by you, but if they’re going to force you to drag them against their will then don’t bother. You’re wasting your time and theirs. They are better off working for another company (namely, your competitors).

As you go through your career training and supervising employees you won’t be able to reach every employee on every subject being taught. It can be for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day they won’t feel the same amount of passion that you do on a particular topic, or have some other hang-up that is within them and has nothing to do with you. Just be ok with the fact that sometimes you can use your best techniques and efforts in training and developing employees and for whatever reason it won’t “stick”. They will rebuke you at every turn. Don’t take any of that personally and don’t let it sap your enthusiasm. Your company and the next employee deserve your best.