There are many known benefits in offering a full training programme for your employees. Lots of small businesses struggle to implement adequate training systems, but by taking the time to do so, the rewards will hugely outweigh the time and costs involved. All organisations are unique, but as a general rule, there are some standard areas of training that all programmes should incorporate:
Training Categories
Creating a programme that covers the major business areas of your organisation will ensure that a company maximises the potential of its staff. Areas to consider are:
Human Resources
Creating orientation (first day/week training) and onboarding training (first year of employment) is essential for every organisation. Not only does it educate new employees as to how things work and where to find information, but it frees up leadership time higher up the organisation.
Technical Skills
These are the hard skills required for every employee to undertake their role effectively. Technical skills cover aspects such as internal processes and protocols, IT and technology training, product and service training and health and safety considerations.
Soft Skills
These include a wide variety of essential skills including communications, leadership and management training, teamwork, ethics and time management. These are the skills that can enhance an employee’s overall performance and contribute to the development of a long career within the organisation.
Professional (external) Training
Many organisations provide their employees with access to external training portals, to enhance staff development or because the law requires it (legal/insurance/audit requirements). This can provide access to high quality professional learning, so long as the content is in line with the processes and values of the business. It is vital, however that external training can be accessed easily via the organisation’s in-house training system. When employees are required to access a variety of training resources via a multitude of portals compliance can be poor as it is difficult for team members to keep up with what is required of them and remember login details etc. Linking out from one central system solves this problem and also ensures content is scheduled in line with other job role requirements. An example would be a veterinary practice who might want to schedule a specific veterinary pharmacy course from an external provider such as Veterinary Prescriber. Login details and specific course to be undertaken would be shown in the in-house training system along with a link to the external provider, and this would be scheduled for certain job roles at an appropriate time in their training programme.
Why Go Digital?
Any training programme needs to be accessible by all team members, whenever they need, and from anywhere. In our modern world, where people work from home, it is no longer viable to operate a paper-based system. A digital, on-line portal is the only way to provide 24/7 access and accommodate all of the necessary links to internal and external training schemes.
Benefits of Employee Training
In creating a comprehensive and online digital programme, an organisation can expect the following benefits:
- Improved employee morale, job satisfaction and motivation. Training ensures that employees feel valued, appreciated and that their development is considered as critical.
- Higher productivity and profits obtained through minimising inefficiencies across all areas of the business.
- Reduction of employee turnover, thus reducing the costs of recruitment and training.
- Improved competitive advantage as team members remain up-to-date on new technologies and their continuing professional development is managed.
If you would like to discuss how we can help you with your training needs, please get in touch here.