Businesses that embrace new technology tend to grow faster. Staying competitive within an industry requires businesses to stay up to date, and that does mean incremental change as needed. Still, a lot of small companies don't actually make the jump, and sometimes, this hesitation is due to fear.
The truth is that employees may not adapt to new tech easily, which can hurt the investment. The following are a few tips that may help businesses implement new tech when needed.
Teach in Sections
It is important to note that employees don't all learn the same way. Understanding that some employees are better visual learners while others are hands-on learners is vital during the training session. It is important that you have trainers who can identify what your workers need to get everyone up to date as effectively as possible.
Involve Employees
Employers thinking about investing in new technology have to take steps to ensure that employees are given an opportunity to offer feedback on the products being considered. Many hardware and software companies offer demonstrations or have demonstration periods.
During these demonstrations, employees can try out features of the potential technology and give feedback to the IT team in your company. You want to use this information to choose the most user-friendly tech for your employees, which is a vital step early on during this process.
Accept Long-Term Issues
As alluded to earlier, some employees are visual learners, others are more hands-on, and others want to just read user manuals a few times to try to understand the new technology.
Employers who have accepted this reality will also need to be patient. It could take employees weeks, months, or even years before they fully adapt to new technology or software. Things can get harder for the company if there are employees who are skeptical about using this new tech. These individuals are going to slow things down a bit, but most of them should come around at some point.
It should be pointed out that no matter how much you try, you might not be able to have the IT team there all the time, so it would be a good idea to create an internal instructions database full of user guides that employees can use as reference when need and new employees can use this to learn how to use the technology in your establishment.
Identify Internal Experts
No matter how many trainers you have to help get employees on board, there is still going to be a shortage. This is especially true if you have a relatively robust number of employees or if you are still training people long after those initial weeks.
What employers can do is enlist the help of an HR representative to identify savvy employees within your business. You are going to be able to give these individuals added responsibilities to help you train employees who are having a hard time adapting. This will also be helpful for new employees.
Be sure to have the HR team figure out a way to thank these individuals because, as you know, appreciation goes a long way in increasing employee retention. It might even be a good idea to create an entire task force of employees who can teach others how to use the new technology. You might want to consider giving some of these individuals a raise or a bonus to show your appreciation and to motivate them to train others.
Gather Insight
After working with this technology for some time, employers can gain new insight. All you have to do is gather the data so that you can see how employees are doing with the new technology. One easy way to do this is with a survey that everyone can fill out.
You can find out if there are certain areas that could use some improvement, and you can find out how things are running now that either most or all of your employees have adapted to the new technology.
Hopefully, some of these tips make it easier to implement new tech to help keep your company competitive. It is going to take work and patience, but this should prove to be worth it in the end.
