The idea of training can often be a worry for many businesses, especially if you have a large workforce. Not to mention that the idea of training can also be an unhappy one for many employees if they’re presented with long and drawn-out presentations, confusing information or the idea that they’ll be stuck in a room for hours because of the necessity to learn something new.
Training, therefore, may be synonymous with extra work and responsibility for employees, and extra expense and time for the company itself.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be viewed in this light. Training can be a hugely positive and rewarding experience for everyone involved — it just needs to be done in the right way.
Why Is Training Employees Important?
As a business trying to keep costs at a minimum, you may think extensive and focused training is a waste of money and resources, and you might consider alternative options, such as letting employees learn as they go, or letting other employees pitch in to teach about important tasks. However, this can be a mistake, and isn’t going to get the best out of your team. If you consider training an afterthought or neglect it, all this is saying to your new — or current — employees is that you’re not interested as a company on focusing fully on employee development, and employees being confident in their abilities.
Training employees is essential for the following reasons:
Business growth. You can’t hope for your business to continue to thrive if your employees’ skills are neglected. Adequate and consistent training means a team that is constantly evolving and at the forefront of every task required of them. It’s going to be your employees that drive your business forward and keep it afloat if you have a busy team, therefore, training them more efficiently in their job roles will be fundamental for business growth.
Employee satisfaction. Your employees need to know that you care about their development. Offering training shows that you’re paying attention to what they might need to learn, and giving the opportunity to provide everything they need. Employees will also feel more confident and comfortable in their own abilities after adequate training, so this can lead to more efficiency and positivity.
Good communication. Within business, and especially when it comes to the process of how to do things, you need to make sure that everyone is working from the same page. Training enables all employees to learn in the same way, and be presented with the same information, to make sure that everything is communicated effectively.
This is particularly important if you’re debating official training over simply having other employees train up their colleagues. While sometimes this might work depending on the task and the employee’s expertise, a lot of the time it can lead to miscommunication, as every employee will have their own way of doing things, therefore, they might not be objective when it comes to training others.
How to Effectively Train Employees: 5 Tips
- Think of Training as an Investment
This is where money and resources come into play. By opting for training as being optional rather than obligatory, this means you might be trying to cut corners in order to save money. However, training should be thought of differently, and more of an investment than an expense. Through employing good training practices, you’re investing in your employees — and your own company — because training will help to create a more solid and capable workforce, under which your business can flourish.
- Set up the Right Space for a Training Area
Employees need room to breathe, learn and grow, so a dedicated training area is a good idea compared to trying to train everyone at their desks or in a cramped workspace. A training area needs to be private and peaceful, away from the usual workings of the business. If you’re trying to train in a main office space, for example, you might be interrupted by phone calls, emails or visitors.
Therefore the right space where you can concentrate fully on training, and have the room to do so, will be key for a more effective learning experience.
- Use Professional Training Courses
The best way to ensure proper training is to employ professional courses to teach it correctly. You can use services like the Skills Training Group to invest in courses for employees who need to learn new skills, like first aid and more. Professional training courses mean that you get the expertise of those who know best how to teach a new skill, and can make it as effective and interesting as possible.
This also makes it easier if you can send employees off for a day to spend time in a dedicated course with professional trainers.
- Make it Interesting
If you’re training on-site and trying to train in-house instead of providing for an external course, then you need to make it interesting. Just as within a classroom environment, employees (like students) will not learn effectively if they’re being given huge bulks of information or simply text on a page.
Make training interesting by including activities, visuals, presentations, videos and practical learning.
You can even ask employees how they best learn, and how they would best like to be trained.
- Train in Smaller Groups, or Even on an Individual Basis
The difficulty with trying to train a large group all at once is that you can’t focus on individual needs or learning abilities. Everyone learns in a different way, and at a different rate, which means even if you’re providing an interesting and in-depth training course, some people may learn quicker than others, and some may even be struggling.
By training in much smaller groups, or even on an individual basis if you can, you can better tend to the individual needs of each person, and allow them time to ask questions, or check with them how they best learn new information.
In summary, training is always a worthwhile investment, and can also be a great development and bonding opportunity, too.