The importance of investing in a training and development program is increasing as more and more young people join the workforce. Since the baby boomer generation is slowly dwindling away and will be leaving behind a wealth of knowledge and experience, millennials and Gen Z are swiftly becoming the most numerous demographics in the workforce. Actually, 46% of the American workforce is comprised of people of both generations. As competition for talent increases, companies are working harder than ever to reduce employee turnover.
The answer is to develop a solid and efficient knowledge management strategy for collecting, organizing, and disseminating the company’s wealth of internal expertise. A higher level of employee engagement and retention is the result of a training and development program that helps workers feel more comfortable in their positions.
In this post, we’ll walk you through four main phases to create an employee training program and assist you in developing and retaining your most valued employees.
Examine Training Gaps and Prospects
Finding out what you need or whether there are any learning possibilities is the first stage in any training and development program for employees. If your business operates in a highly regulated sector, it will benefit greatly from training courses designed to help staff members learn about the sector and its regulations.
You could also find that certain departments or teams aren’t as effective as others and aren’t satisfying the requirements of your company as a whole. The productivity gap may be closed by investing in training programs that foster staff growth and development.
As an alternative, employee training programs may simply assist in bettering the work experience for workers, which in turn increases retention. Investing in your employees by providing them with opportunities for professional and personal growth is a certain way to save money in the long run, both in terms of recruiting costs and the cost of retaining talented workers.
Each training plan has to have a distinct business goal after you’ve considered compliance requirements, performance gaps, and career advancement possibilities as sources of training inspiration. Ask yourself whether investing in training would help you meet legal requirements and avoid penalties, boost employee output and return on investment, or save money on hiring and onboarding by fostering internal promotion and succession.
Make a Plan for Your Goals and How to Achieve Them
Your training and development program is more likely to be successful if you set specific, quantifiable objectives. You can compare team productivity before and after training on a new set of tools if your goal is to boost worker productivity.
As you contemplate a strategy, it may help to ask yourself how confident you are in your own staff’s ability to provide training sessions, and whether you’ll need to hire an outside company. Also, consider whether it’s more beneficial to teach your staff in a classroom setting or a more informal workshop.
You could question whether in-house training sessions bridge the knowledge gap better, or if workers should rather be sent to external events to learn more about the sector as a whole. You might also want to decide whether you want to focus on management or skills development throughout your training.
Utilize Appropriate Means
In order to carry out the training successfully, you must determine what materials will be required. Of course, having qualified teachers leading the training is crucial, but so is fostering a positive learning environment with the right technologies.
Create a list of everything you have access to and everything else you may need for the application. Things that may be on this list are:
- Tools and resources, digital or otherwise, for instruction and knowledge acquisition;
- Teachers, trainers, coaches, and mentors;
- Instructional resources (ie. workbooks, videos, or websites).
If you’re doing an in-house program rather than an external company, you may need to create your own training materials.
Assess, Adjust, and Repeat
After you’ve settled on a strong plan for training and growth, you may want to do a test run. Select a sample of high achievers to test the waters with the new initiative. Before rolling out the strategy company-wide, you may use this method to get feedback and avoid making mistakes.
Since there is such a broad variety of HR measurements, you should utilize the goals you established in step two to track the progress of your program over time. Employee performance, project completion rates, and customer acquisition rates are just a few examples of measurable KPIs.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to the training and development of employees, the process is never complete. Examine the effectiveness of your training programs by comparing employee and company output over time. If your method does not seem to be successful, you must not be scared to make adjustments to it.
