How can you measure employee knowledge?

Knowing the knowledge levels of your employees is a crucial step when trying to enhance performance and increase revenue for your business. After all, your employees are the stars of the show so if their knowledge isn’t up to scratch you’re going to find it difficult to progress. When we talk about measuring knowledge, we aren’t referring to a traditional test. We are talking more along the lines of knowing what warning signs to look for which indicate that your employee knowledge levels are below average.

In this article, we will tell you the key warning signs to look for, how you can spot them and what you can do to fix them. With the right strategy, your knowledge levels will shoot up and your customers will be happier than ever with the top-notch service they start receiving. So what are you waiting for, let’s dive in.

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Key warning sign of low employee knowledge #1

Do you have an issue with staff turnover?

Boosting employee knowledge goes hand in hand with career advancement and skill-building. These are key traits that employees look for when they join a company and if these learning and development components start to lag, you can be sure your employees will start looking for work elsewhere. In fact, Linkedin’s Workforce Learning Report found that 93% of employees would stay at a company for longer if they invested in their careers. Additionally, 70% of employees say they are likely to leave their current job to work for a company that invests in their personal development.

There is a clear correlation between employee turnover rates and the amount of attention that is focused on knowledge boosting strategies. With this in mind, it’s crucial that you ramp up your knowledge strengthening strategies and tie them in with structured career plans. This will ensure that your employees stay working with you for the long term.

How can I fix this?

When your employees start work with your company you need to make it clear that there is a career advancement plan. You should explain exactly how they can move up the rankings and develop their skills and performance with you as a business. From the offset, this will show your employees that you are serious about their career development and how you can help them advance.

Next, if you don’t already have a career advancement plan with training modules tied into them, it’s time to create some.

For each role within your business, you should detail a plan of action for each year that a person works for you in this role. This should include what is expected from the employee, what you want them to achieve and how you want them to achieve it. This will clearly set expectations for the employee and give them a clear path to follow which will help them succeed.

Within the plan, you should recommend training which will strengthen their knowledge in the areas which you are concerned with. Your plan may look something like this:

Role: Customer Service Agent

Key Milestones in year one:

Respond to all internal/external customer calls/email inquiries and adhere to targets and objectives set. Knowledge tasks - Complete all customer call handbooks 1-5 and the relevant tasks set within them.
Monitor progress on jobs, communicating with customers/stakeholders where required. Knowledge tasks - Complete training on customer monitoring software and receive at least 8/10 on your communication score feedback from customers and stakeholders.
Ensure effectiveness, productivity and overall efficiency in our service. Knowledge tasks - Complete speed assessment course and improve efficiency score by 20% by the end of the year.

You get the idea, the point of these is to give your employees clearly defined tasks that can be marked off and are a clear indicator of whether they deserve to be progressed to the next level in their role. After this, you would create an action plan for year two, year three and so on.

Key warning sign of low employee knowledge #2

Your staff fail to regularly follow best practice

Do you frequently notice that your employees all sell to your customers in different ways, or perhaps their routines for booking in customers are all slightly varied? If this is the case, it’s a telltale sign that your employee’s business knowledge is pretty low and they aren’t fully aware of your company’s best practices. By training your employees on your procedures, it will make them more confident in their role and it will also make them quicker because they won’t have to think about what they are doing.

How can I fix this?

Spend a day in the life of your employees, making sure you work in all different departments of your business. Write down all the procedures which they are supposed to follow. Once you have done this you can write out your company’s best practice guide for doing these different tasks.

For example, you may spend the day in the shoes of your care team and realise that you are missing best practice guides which show them how to greet visitors and how to sign them in, how to take payments for lunch or how to wrap up a guest visit if it is the end of the day.

Put these guides into a digital platform that your employees can access from anywhere at whatever time they need them. Make sure they are fully searchable so they can be reached at the time of need and ensure you turn these guides into training material so that the knowledge is fully embedded.

If you don’t have a mobile-first digital platform, print your guides out into posters and pin them up where the procedure is most likely to take place. For example, have the lunch payments poster in the kitchen and the signing in poster by the front door. This will ensure that your staff are always reminded of the best way to do things.

Key warning sign of low employee knowledge #3

Your staff training happens monthly or yearly

This is an obvious sign that staff knowledge is lacking because training needs to happen daily. Monthly or yearly knowledge boosting sessions just aren’t effective and they add little to no value to employee development. As you know, employee development is crucial and this was evidenced in a study by Middlesex University for Work Based Learning which found that from a 4,300 workers sample, 74% felt that they weren't achieving their full potential at work due to lack of development opportunities.

How can I fix this?

Your monthly or yearly training events are paramount to enhancing employee performance, there is no doubt about that. But to ensure your employees reap the full benefits of these knowledge boosting sessions you need to repeat the knowledge they learned in regular bite-sized training modules.

Microlearning is an amazing way to ensure training happens daily and deeply embed knowledge into your employee’s minds. It does this by improving your employee’s capability to absorb and retain information, this is through short playlists, gamification, spaced repetition, rewards and recognition.

Because your employees don’t have to spend over 10 minutes per day on their training they are much more likely to boost their knowledge every day. What’s even better is that because your employee will find it easier to embed knowledge, they will feel more confident about their learning which positively impacts how many times they access your training. All in all, microlearning sets up an incredibly powerful learning cycle that you can’t afford to ignore.

Key warning sign of low employee knowledge #4

If a manager is not present your staff struggle to perform well

We are all familiar with this scenario, a manager takes annual leave and all of a sudden employees forget to use their initiative. They are calling up their manager on their day off, leaving tasks unfinished and missing deadlines for projects.

This is a sign that employee knowledge is low and as a result, confidence is at rock bottom. With knowledge comes power and this is what gives your employees the confidence to use their initiative when no one else is around. If your workforce falls apart when senior members of the team aren’t there you need to address this knowledge issue quickly.

How can I fix this?

You need to give your employees the tools they need to perform their job the best way that they can. Within these tools, you should include a digital knowledgebase which your staff can access from anywhere and at any time. By having a handy knowledgebase which they can access from their very own smart phone, tablet or desktop device, it empowers your employees to work more confidently knowing that they have all the information they need at their fingertips.

Just think of it like Google for your business. A digital knowledgebase organises and clearly presents your company information, making sure it’s all in one place. Staff can quickly search for anything they need to know when you give them this just-in-time learning feature. Policies, manuals, guides, instructions and ‘How To’ resources can be accessed at the click of a button. You can help your employees learn in the flow of work to speed up processes and improve performance. Comments can be collected to make sure documents are accurate and understandable.

Key warning sign #5

You don’t have a reward and recognition strategy in place

A survey by OGO found that 40% of employed Americans would put more energy into their work if they were recognised more often and this goes for training too. When your employees feel that their knowledge boosting efforts are being valued and recognised they are much more likely to train more regularly. If you don’t have a solid recognition plan in place you can expect employee knowledge levels to be low. Think about it this way;

‘Employee A’ works at a company that rewards him every time he completes key training modules. He finds it a struggle to fit the learning in, but he receives uplifting messages from his senior team where they explain why they are proud of him and why he should keep up the good work. These motivational messages spur him on to keep learning and remind him of what he’s doing it for.

‘Employee B’ works at a company that never even acknowledges when she completes a learning module. She is crushed for time and finds it a struggle to learn and when no one even notices that she does it, she is left wondering if there is any point in carrying on. All it does is cause her more stress and reduce the amount of time she has to spend on her daily tasks.

Which employee do you think is going to have higher knowledge levels?

How can I fix this?

Easy, set up an employee reward and recognition programme which is linked to your training. Below are a few ideas to build your recognition programme.

Carry out social recognition

Every time your employee completes a key milestone in their learning make an announcement on your company app, intranet or announcements board. This will make your employee feel involved with the company, valued and recognised. It also encourages other employees to keep learning and sets a benchmark of what success looks like.

Use a digital rewards and recognition platform

Using a digital platform for rewards and recognition is a quick, easy and affordable way for you to send your thanks. Oplift’s reward and recognition platform allows managers and colleagues to send stickers and trophies to staff when they think they have done a good job. These are completely customisable so you can tailor them to fit perfectly with your business. Allowing team mates to send recognition stickers as well as managers allows for 360-degree feedback which is amazing for employee engagement and happiness.

Monthly shining star award

You can reward your monthly shining star with lunch, a voucher or simply their photo with a mention on an announcement board. By having this award it gives all of your staff something to work towards. The award can be a combination of employee commitment, initiative customer service and amount of training done in a month. This will positively encourage your team to boost their knowledge daily and carry out great service.

Quarterly deserved rest day

If you have the option to do so, it would be great if you could reward an employee every quarter with a ‘rest day off’. You should do this to give them a break from all the hard work they have been putting into their training and performance at work. This is a great way to show that you are compassionate about how stressful their job can be.

Wall of knowledge experts

Have a wall of fame, but in this case, it would be a wall of knowledge experts, where you display the photos of the top learners in your team. Review it every six months to ensure that the people who are boosting their knowledge the most get the recognition that they deserve.

Are you looking for a comms and training app that boasts a 98% engagement rate? Even in retail!

Ocasta Engage is used by Virgin Media, Next and Tesco Mobile to keep their customer-facing teams engaged, knowledgeable and motivated. If you want to see how it could work in your organisation book a free demo.

You shouldn’t demo Engage if:

You want low engagement rates.
You want a confusing comms and training platform which does more to repel your customer-facing teams than engage them.
You want your customer-facing teams to feel overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to remember.
You like a clunky, frustrating experience when it comes to engagement platforms for customer-facing teams.
You enjoy having to go through central teams to post anything which slows the progress of your customer-facing teams down.
You don’t want a 98% engagement rate for your customer-facing teams.

You should demo Engage if:

You want a dedicated app for your frontline teams which makes it easy for them to find what they need and serve your customers in the best way possible
You want enviable engagement rates which other platforms in your business could never compare to
You want an engaged, happy and knowledgeable team of experts who are always ready to deliver the best customer service.
You enjoy working with a team of friendly experts who genuinely care about the performance of your customer-facing teams
You’re finally ready to end your engagement struggles and embrace a new streamlined way of working where everyone is always efficient and productive