Tips for Training Outsourced Employees

One of the best ways I've found to train your outsourced staff is to actually record your screen. Record the screen. You're doing the job, explaining what you're doing as you're going along and just uploading the video to something like YouTube and putting it as a, unlisted video and given them to say, okay, I want you to do this job.

Here's a recording of me doing it. Please watch this video. Any questions ask me. But by all means, just follow the video and I want you to do it like that. And what you'll find is that the great thing about a video, and you talking about it, is that they can pause it. They can go back to it. They can play over and over until they understand it.

They can play it while they're actually doing the job alongside of it, and it really, really helps. Now one of the programs I use for this is a program called Snagit. Snagit's actually quite a versatile program. It allows you to. Record your screen, but also allows you to take screenshots as you go. So, one of the other things I do is if it's a very simple, straightforward job, or like for example, I needed a WordPress backup done a specific way, so I just took a screenshot of the WordPress, put an arrow to where you'll find the backup link, in the backup link.

Click that, take a screenshot of the actual backup page. And put an arrow to where I want you to fill in the details. Then I put one, two, three, four, five next to it, and then gave the details that I want to fill in and said, right. Okay, I want you to do that now to another 50 blogs. Yeah, 50 of them.

And that was it. It was simple as that. And it was just the case of that was one thing that was effectively three screenshots and five bullet points, saying what to do, and it was repetitive. It was the same thing over and over. The only thing they had to do was change the name. Of the backup to the blog that they were doing it on.

That was it, it wasn't that hard. The rest of the details and all the rest of it remained the same. It was all getting uploaded to the exact same place, and I just got them to go ahead and do that and what the best thing to do is get them to do a one time checkup, get them to do it a second time check it. Get them to do it a third time check it, now if they've done it every single time correctly, then you can just leave them to it.

You don't have to check anymore. Well, I check every so often, but it's like you just say it right off you go and do all the rest of them now, because of they've done it three times in a row correctly, they're going to do it. The rest of them all correctly. So that's another good way to do that. I'm going to put the link in the description for Snagit, as I say it can record screens, and you can also do screenshots and you can add arrows and you can put stamps on it so you can pull like one, two, three, four, five is what I use quite a lot along with my arrows.

Or, you can highlight boxes of like say, you want text change. I usually just take a screenshot for the website, put box on it, but an arrow to it and say, change this text and give them the other text and say change it to that. Now when it comes to small jobs, you know jobs that maybe take between a couple of minutes and ten minutes long.

Most of them, you'll find that you can actually do a one or two page PDF on them. Maybe a few more pages if you've added screenshots, but what I tend to do is some screenshots, some bullet points, write about what I wanted to do and then make that PDF and say, there you go. That's how I want you to do the job.

Now one of the first things actually done was how to make a PDF of training stuff. So therefore I could then give screenshots and text and say make that PDF and that, the reason I'm asking virtual assistant to me PDF is that it saves me time making it, and it means that once they're in place, if you hire anyone new or you've say you need additional employees or that person leaves or whatever, you've got all this training material.

You've got your videos, you've got your PDFs, you got all the things together for anyone, new coming along, and then they can actually go ahead and just learn on how to do this stuff a lot, lot quicker, and you're not having to be involved in retraining them again. So that's why it's worthwhile doing. One of the other things that is like, I really top tip here is when getting your VA.

To train other VA's. So if you're needing more people to do, say, you've got a job where that VA is doing it, but you need more people to do it, then the best thing to do is actually to get your VA to train the other VA's and check their work and so on. And then you can obviously check as well, but it saves you a whole lot of hassle.

And a whole load of time. You've got all the videos, you've got all the PDs, you've got your VA training them and checking the work and so on. You can obviously check the work after it's been done as well, just to be 100% sure that it's getting done correctly and then that's it. Leave them to, honestly, this saves so much time, but one thing I would say, or stress as if you're taking jobs away from a VA to give to another VA, and if you're doing it for the reasons that I'm doing it because.

You know, the first VA has been with you long enough now and you've got more advanced work and more, you've got more jobs that are important or more important than make you more money and you want them to concentrate on that, but you still have to get the other work done. Then make that clear to the VA you're not taking away work for them to give what we work and then they're not going to have a job.

It's that you're giving away the things that you feel are not as important. Still have to be done and you want to get that away to the new VA while, you get that VA that's been with your longer to do work that makes you more money at the end of the day. That's been great. I mean, honestly, I mean, even like on Bee All Design, for example, we've got our design manager, he trains all the new staff who they come in to use the system.

He's got all his stuff in place for that. He shows them how to do all the work. Set up properly, make sure they're doing all the things correctly. And that saves me a job of having to, you know, once I have hired a person, I don't have to worry about them actually getting trained. He deals with that. But also one of the things that we've been working on recently is we've been putting together guides for the designers.

On how to do specific things around different social media platforms or different newsletters and all sorts of things that basically like here is the best way, here is information. Even some of our clients, we have now got tips and stuff like that to deal with certain clients, as you work with clients. You start to lean what they like, what they look for, what impresses, them and so on.

And so we write all that down and then we have that available so that way other designers now how approach that client and what to deal with the client. Some clients have designers they like better than others and that's fine too, but we still keep a whole list of things that they like and what the enjoy and stuff like that together to make it easier to work with them.

So anyway, yeah. So record it, if you can, a screen recording of you talking perfect, screenshots with arrows and numbers and bullet points. Perfect. You know, it just depends on the size of the job and what it has and the complexity of it. But get that done and if you get your training right. Your staff are going to be so much better, you're going to have good positive experiences.

Instead of saying, oh, that person was useless because you are useless at training them. You just have to realize that they are not mind readers. They are not people instantly turn up and be like, oh yes, I can do all that stuff. You maybe have a difference when it comes to like backend developers and so on.

They should know what they're doing when they turn up to the job. Same with designers, they should know how to actually do the design work. But if you want them to work a specific way, then you need to teach them the way that you want them to work for you. So, are you happy with the job anyway? If you like this video, give it a like, subscribe to the channel from not done so already share this video with any of your business friends or anybody who'd be interested in hiring people from outsourced workers and so on. And I will see you in the next video. Bye.