A digital society demands digital solutions. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing work environment, effective employee training plays a vital role in ensuring efficiency, productivity and safety. Traditional training methods are rapidly being replaced by digital solutions that offer numerous benefits. One such solution is the implementation of digital work instructions.
Digital work instructions are the solution for efficient operation of processes on the shop floor, but are also essential for the training and education of operators. Below we take a closer look at the importance of clear, visual and interactive work instructions for employee training. We discuss some case studies and give tips on how to draw up good work instructions.
What are Digital Work Instructions?
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations across industries are embracing digital technologies to streamline operations and increase productivity. One area where this digital transformation is having a major impact is in employee training. More and more companies are replacing traditional paper work instructions with digital work instructions to make the learning process faster, more interactive and clearer.
Common Problems
Companies face several challenges when it comes to training new employees with traditional paper-based instructions. The use of manuals, handouts and workbooks is often the normal way of working, but it has its limitations. These materials lack interactivity and can quickly become outdated, leading to potential confusion and inefficiency in the training process. In addition, cross-departmental collaboration is time-consuming and dependent on memos, emails or face-to-face meetings that can lead to a communication gap. This gap hinders the seamless transfer of information and can hinder the effectiveness of the production process.
Another problem arises when using paper systems or manual filing methods, such as spreadsheets or physical filing. Maintaining and organizing training documents becomes a daunting task, with the risk of losing important information. This lack of efficient document management hinders the ability to retrieve relevant material when needed and can lead to compliance issues. It becomes a challenge to keep track of training and to determine which employees are up-to-date and meet the necessary training requirements. Moreover, the lack of standardized training practices only exacerbates these challenges.
Work instructions: the Solution
To overcome these challenges, more and more companies are using digital work instructions. Digital work instructions are clear step-by-step descriptions of tasks and processes that are displayed in a visual and interactive way. Unlike cluttered paper work instructions, digital work instructions present tasks in a concise, interactive and clear way by using images, video material, 3D models…
Digital work instructions have a positive impact on operator and employee training. They provide a versatile and effective approach through the use of images, videos and other visual elements. That way, the instructions become less abstract and easier to understand. This ensures higher involvement and better retention of the information.
One of the main benefits of digital work instructions when training employees is the real-time insight into their competences and skill level. Via a competence matrix you get an overview of their skills and progress level at a glance. In this way, companies are able to deploy employees flexibly according to their ability, or to train new employees at short notice when they see that they have too few employees to perform a certain task or process.
What is a Skills Matrix?
A skills matrix is a clear tool that visualizes the competences and skills of employees. It clearly shows which competencies are required for a particular position and how well employees master these competencies. Companies can assess at a glance whether employees have the right skills and deploy them flexibly according to their ability, or upskill them so that they can also take on new tasks.
Practice shows us that being able to train employees quickly is crucial for the smooth operation of the production process. This was confirmed in one of our collaborations with De Opleidingscoach and its clients. Some companies approached De Opleidingscoach with the question of how they can train employees in a short period of time so that the inflow to a new production department would run smoothly, and how standardization can be implemented on the shop floor and in the production process.
In both cases, an expert from De Opleidingscoach chose Azumuta’s software as a performance support tool. Azumuta was chosen for a number of reasons: the software allows employees to learn on the job, there is content management management, Azumuta is scalable and provides several custom features. In addition, Azumuta allows standardized training to be set up with digital work instructions, creating more uniformity in the workplace.
Tips for Good Work Instructions
However, providing digital work instructions in itself is not enough to bring about positive changes. It is important that these work instructions are drawn up correctly so that they are clear and interactive, but also allow important points of attention to be highlighted so that safety is guaranteed and human errors are avoided.
The Training Coach guided its customers in drawing up good work instructions and also provides some tips that should be taken into account when starting to create digital work instructions. Be sure to read these useful tips on the page of De Opleidingscoach.
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