Many employers have experienced the frustrating situation of promoting an employee and then seeing that individual’s performance drop. While there are many factors that can affect an employee’s performance at work, lack of leadership and communication skills is often one of the biggest issues. The right management training can tackle this problem and allow employees to thrive.

Why Does Employee Performance Drop After Promotion?

When they are looking to fill senior roles, managers often promote talented employees who currently hold more junior roles in the company. Unfortunately, these employees often don’t perform as well in their new roles as they did in their old ones. The reason for this disappointing trend is generally not a lack of talent or motivation–characteristics that employees demonstrated before promotion–but rather a mismatch between the skills that the employee has and the skills that the role requires.

Skills That Help Employees Thrive After Promotion

Employees who are moving into leadership roles following promotion face a new set of challenges. They must have the communication skills necessary to not only work in a team of their peers, but also to organize, manage, and delegate tasks to others. Employees who have never before held leadership positions often do not have the right leadership skills, which can lead their performance to drop, even if they are otherwise very talented.

Training For Promoted Employees

Leadership and communication skills training can help employees to obtain the skills they need to thrive in their new roles. Ideally, this management training will begin before promoted employees are faced with a critically important situation in which they must lead a team to successfully complete a project. The training should continue while the recently promoted employee finds their feet in the new role, giving them the chance to reflect on the skills they have learned and begin to put them into practice.

Addressing Employees’ Training Needs

Many organizations struggle to identify which employees are most urgently in need of training. In the case of promoted employees, managers may fail to anticipate that those promoted need training to help them succeed in their new roles. Rather than waiting for employee performance to drop due to lack of training or poor training, the most supportive employers automatically offer training for all employees who achieve a promotion. They also offer training to employees who ask for extra help, therefore creating a culture of open and ongoing learning within the organization.

Designing Employee Training Programs

When designing a management training program, it is essential to identify the areas in which employees lack the skills they need. Asking employees directly what training they require can be a good way to identify unmet training needs, as long as the question is posed within a culture of openness and support. In some cases, it can be useful to allow employees to respond anonymously to questions about their current training needs, as anonymous surveys can provide a very honest picture of where training is lacking or poor in the organization. Once employers have this information, they can provide management training programs that ensure employee performance remains high after promotion.

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