Why is Employee Training & Development in the Workplace Important?
The modern business landscape is highly competitive. Company leaders are always looking for ways to maintain an edge and stay ahead of the game. Things like quality of product/service, market share, capital investment, and leadership are undoubtedly crucial. However, the employees are the life force and bedrock of any organization.
A common question drives almost all business leaders – “How can we increase employee performance and better the workforce?” The answer lies in coming up with a rich employee training and development program. Training programs help create a highly-skilled, trained, and motivated workforce for sustainable, high-performance businesses.
Benefits of Training & Development in the Workplace?
The benefits of implementing workplace training and development programs are several, as you’ll see. Let’s take a look at them –
Develops Future Leaders
Employees with leadership skills are vital to a business’s evolution and growth. Targeting employees via a training program can help you recognize such talent. Instead of acquiring new hires or recruits, you can select from the existing pool of employees for possible future managerial positions.
Increases Productivity
What organization does not strive for the highest possible productivity sustainably? Training and workshops can come in handy by imparting knowledge about new technologies, software, systems, modules, methods, and machines. This leads to higher efficiency and eventually better productivity.
Boosts Workplace Engagement
Training programs lead to employee empowerment and better workplace engagement. Forbes talked about the employee engagement and empowerment data collected from more than 7,000 employees in one of its articles. It said that employees with lower levels of empowerment were the least engaged. They fell into the lower group within the 24th percentile. In comparison, highly empowered employees were in the better group belonging to the 79th percentile.
Positive Employee Retention
One big reason for high workforce turnover is people losing interest in their job due to that sense of repetition. But, a well-trained employee will find a way to spice things up regularly. Training programs help them develop new ways of improving efficiency and doing tasks.
As a result, boredom is rare, and they enjoy better job satisfaction. What’s more, people who love their jobs remain loyal to their organization. They’re less likely to leave their workplace and switch to another.
Builds Workplace Relationships
This is an important one. During training sessions, employees get an opportunity to work together. They get to collaborate on common problems. It’s’ the perfect opportunity to explore new skills and topics, expand their knowledge base, and interact with team members. It’s an excellent bonding opportunity for them.
As employees tackle new challenges, they get to lean on others with specific skill sets. There are many opportunities to learn from each other’s unique knowledge. Learning from one another during development sessions creates a well-rounded workforce that relies on each other. These bonds can lead to better engagement and higher employee retention.
Employee Empowerment
A part of training and development programs is to create motivated leaders who feel more empowered. Such leaders are better at encouraging and influencing employees. They know how to gain their trust and get them going. Empowered employees feel a better sense of value and autonomy and are more confident about their work.
Addressing Employee Weaknesses
Regular training helps to reduce workplace idleness. It is also the perfect time to re-evaluate employees, their skills, and areas where they are lacking. Training programs often prompt companies to plan and analyze things.
A part of this process is to evaluate growth opportunities by reviewing existing talent. In this way, organizations can spot employees with bigger talents while also improving the areas where they sense a lack.
Higher Job Satisfaction
Employees enjoy their work better when there’s a lesser need for control and guidance from their superiors. It creates a less pressurizing environment. With regular training sessions, organizations can improve a more skilled and competent workforce that needs less supervision from their leaders. This, in turn, can boost employee morale and lead to higher job satisfaction.
How to Create a High-impact Employee Training Plan?
Evaluate Skill Gaps
It’s always good to start by identifying the areas where the workforce currently falls short. Think about the gaps in their knowledge or effective skills. What’s the desired level of knowledge that they should have? Answering such questions makes it easier to target specific training outcomes and create a curriculum/training program accordingly.
Design a Blended Training Program
Some of the best training programs will use various training methods to create high-impact modules. To that end, it’s good to try a combination of the following formats –
- Online training modules – The beauty of online training courses is that employees can finish their training almost entirely online. Usually, no hard materials are necessary.
- Instructor-lead Modules – These training modules allow employers to interact with instructors throughout the learning process. Instructors can monitor progress and respond to any questions employees may have.
- Mentoring Sessions – These are like motivational sessions where experienced mentors guide people through the learning process.
- Video-based Training Modules – Video-based materials allow for better understanding and assimilation of the knowledge than simple textbooks.
- Self-learning – This type of learning is ideal for employees who maintain their regular job while going through training. Self-learning with supplementary documents makes learning more flexible and easy. Employees can take things at a comfortable pace.
Practice Good Training Management Techniques
- Monitor progress – Quiz results, assessment scores, and grading can ensure how much the employees have understood and applied the material they have learned.
- Collecting feedback – Asking for employers’ feedback can help create more impactful and well-rounded training materials. This is good for future trainees and trainers.
- Analyzing system reports – helps employers better comprehend how the trainees move through different modules. They can spot problem areas and make necessary tweaks in the learning modules.
Conclusion
An employee training program is one of the most powerful tools in any organization’s arsenal to boost production, improve morale, and decrease the turnover ratio. However, it’s essential to assess employee needs and company goals before coming up with a learning module.