When it comes to employee training, it’s essential that businesses work effectively to develop solutions that can help to limit instances of employee turnover, and to create a healthy work culture via the right processes and operations. 

Although this can be easier said than done, there are still many businesses that are failing to implement training programs that can help to build the right competencies and enable employee satisfaction. 

(Image: McKinsey)

As the data above shows, employees can look to work in order to fulfill a sense of purpose, but there are many metrics that training can help with that lets workers down–particularly when it comes to matters of general satisfaction. 

Some of the biggest disconnects with employee purpose come from their sense of connection and engagement, and with sufficient training programs, this gap can be bridged effectively. 

With this in mind, let’s take a look at where your company could be falling down in its training program structure, and where things could be improved: 

1. You’re Shackled by Limited Resources

For many small businesses, the ability to effectively train employees is impacted by the perception that limited resources will deliver insufficient results. If you’re unable to buy the right training software or hire effective professionals, it can be difficult to know how to set up an effective system to get the best out of your employees and new recruits. 

However, training can be far more straightforward than many business leaders believe, and programs can be built from the ground up using a range of multimedia. For instance, creating instructional video content covering key processes is an easy and low-cost way of introducing new roles to workers. 

To maximize your training throughout your businesses at a considerably lower cost, an online video training platform can be crafted that can help you to resonate with your employees in a more effective manner. 

2. You’re Solely Relying on Lecturing Employees

Another key problem is that businesses can too easily fall into the trap of lecturing their training materials to employees. When a single trainer lectures information to groups of individuals without sufficient hands-on or face-to-face training, in many cases less information will be retained. 

Instead, businesses should look to enable more personal face-to-face training with trainers, and create scenario-based training programs that employees can use to put their newly acquired knowledge into practice. 

3. You’re Failing to Acknowledge the Needs of Different Employees

One of the biggest drawbacks of one-size-fits-all training programs is that they fail to acknowledge the many different needs of employees. 

Different forms of training will affect your employees in different ways. There are various preferred learning styles in the workplace, and successful businesses will spare a thought for each approach. Here, the solution is to adopt a multimodal learning design that can help employees to thrive in any channel that they think suits them best. 

Failure to take employees’ health and wellbeing into account could become a major issue. This includes mental health, such us stress and anxiety, as well as physical health, such as eye strain, lack of physical activity and back issues. It’s often understated how big of an impact healthy workplace can have on productivity, motivation and progression. 

4. You’re Ignoring Your Own Company Culture

For businesses that are adopting training programs from third parties, there’s always the risk that there will be little learning processes surrounding the company’s own culture. 

Helping to uphold your business culture within your training programs can be an essential way of helping new recruits to fit in and reminding existing employees of the characteristics of their business.

Here, a quick adjustment to make is for firms to brief their consultants to ensure that they understand these core workplace values during lessons. It’s also important to adapt training materials to ensure that these measures are covered throughout the learning process. 

5. You’re Ignoring Your Feedback

When training is complete, your program should never be regarded as ‘done and dusted’. You should be seeking feedback as a means of ensuring that you can continue to improve and grow the quality of your training. 

Performance feedback should be prioritized after a lesson is completed, and you should make sure that you allocate time to reviewing all the feedback you receive and to explore how recurring points can be utilized in a stronger training program in the future. 

If you find that your training programs aren’t quite getting the results that you’d hoped for, don’t worry. There are plenty of low-cost improvements that can help to improve the effectiveness of your approach. 

Here, it’s essential to consider the more complex wants and needs of your employees and the company as a whole–and to avoid using lazy approaches in utilizing programs that don’t match your goals. 

With the right blend of considerations and listening to feedback, your employees can become more efficient and satisfied with their training without the need for breaking the bank on new technology or using expensive third parties.