Training is not just an important part of personal career progression, through effective training you can improve the skills of your whole workforce, in turn making your business more productive and your employees more satisfied.

The type of internal training programs your organisation can benefit from will strongly depend on your goals, resources, amount of trainees and the nature of your business.

There are many different methods of training and developing the specific skills of your employees. Some are relatively informal and don’t require many resources and others can be extensive, time consuming and costly to run.

On the other hand, not training your employees can prove to be a much more costly mistake.

Setting out your training goals

Your training goals should always be derived from your organisational goals. 

If mistakes are often made by your employees or not enough work is getting done you should consider whether or not relevant training would improve staffs’ performance. Keep in mind that in this case the loss of profit as a result of unproductive employees could likely be higher than the total cost of training.

In times of growth, you may look to expand on existing skills and train your staff members to grow into different positions. This saves you spending time and money on recruiting someone new and boosts your reputation as an ideal employer.

Having tailored training goals can improve your employee engagement and retention rates as well. Employees will appreciate the fact that you have listened to their needs and considered their future. Training can be an exciting and stimulating experience for your staff and motivate them to improve.

Below are a few examples of questions you can ask yourself to determine how training could help.

-           Which higher level positions am I looking to fill?

-           What is my training budget?

-           Which skills are required in the near future?

-           Will training help me meet my organisational goals?

-           What are my employees currently struggling with?

-           What will help employees feel more satisfied with their work?

Selecting a training method

Some examples of the most commonly-used training methods are:

-           Classroom style with slides

-           Videos

-           Online programs and courses

-           1-2-1 Mentoring

-           Monitoring

-           Workshops

-           Seminars

-           Webinars

-           Conferences

-           Job rotation and secondments

-           Peer assisted learning

-           Assignments and testing

Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages and depending on your needs; only one or a few programs may be fitting to your organisation.

Although opting to work with external training providers will save you time, it is likely to be expensive and the chances of it being successful heavily depend on the trainer hosting the session.

In comparison to external training, internal training will be perfectly tailored to the needs of your organisation. These training programs encourage team building and tend to involve groups of employees, rather than be provided to individuals separately.

If you choose to provide training though an internally-created development program, you need to keep in mind the additional materials you may require. These can include helpful classroom handouts, presentation slides, books, guides, forms, test papers and tracking tools such as progress reports.

Engaging your employees through training

Effective training and development has been proven to significantly boost employee engagement almost instantly. Training and development opportunities give employees a greater sense of purpose and help them to feel pride in the work they do.

Business can further engage employees through training by encouraging employee feedback, involving employees when setting up individual objectives, listen to their opinions and encourage group learning.

Enabling staff to use their skills

The employees that have undergone the training program should be able to implement and practice what they have learned in their day to day activities. 

During training, it’s also beneficial to practice new skills by using real-life scenarios employees will have experience with.  These scenarios can be devised with the help of senior employees who have a breadth of experience in their role.

These scenarios could be anything from having lots of tasks to complete by a short deadline to practising how to deal with a difficult customer query. By doing so, the employee can easily understand why they need such a skill and how to properly implement newly learned techniques.

The knowledge of other employees can furthermore be a resource on its own when organising group projects, as employees learn from each other as well as from their training plans.

Equal opportunities

As a business owner, you must ensure that you offer training opportunities consistently. Not only will you attract more applicants for vacancies, but employees will be more likely to stay when they know they can train, grow and ultimately achieve their career goals with you.

By law, businesses are required to offer equal opportunities to staff in regards to training and development across your organisation.

Failure to offer equal training opportunities to employees because of their gender, religion, race or disability would qualify as discrimination and be a serious breach of the 2010 Equality Act.