High employee turnover rates are causing organizations to review their current training programs and make changes to improve employee satisfaction. A 2022 Work Institute Report found that an astounding 47 million US workers quit their jobs in 2021, and ‘career issues’ was the most cited reason for leaving.
Strategically investing in the training and development of your employees, as well as nurturing their talents and building their skill sets, will help your organization achieve its goals, improve your company culture, and assist your leaders in managing your talent a lot better.
It’s therefore important to properly and continuously manage staff training. This involves prioritizing constant learning, planning and creating staff development initiatives, and managing their administration and costs.
Whether you’re looking to outsource to a team of experts for support or to recalculate your current approach, below we offer tips on how to better manage your training program and promote growth and higher levels of employee engagement.
Consider Using a Learning Management System
It’s not surprising that corporate learning is rapidly changing. This is why more companies are switching to learning management software as a great way to reduce costs, enhance organizational performance, and increase employee satisfaction. However, when employees are in the process of learning, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything.
This is where LMS, or learning management system, can come in as a great cost-effective solution for businesses looking to track employee training, especially when multiple employees within different departments are taking courses in various subjects.
This extremely helpful tool can help you develop your employees’ skills, provide them with the right knowledge to complete their tasks and develop activities that are accessible and structured.
By offering personalized training online to your employees, they can acquire new knowledge and move up within the organization and set up a clear path for development. This, in turn, leads to increased employee retention and engagement. Employees are more likely to stay with a company that invests in their careers and helps them grow.
Clarify Employees’ Needs and Goals
The first step to helping your employees decide which direction they want to go is to determine how they can prioritize their time and effort to advance their careers. This requires that they have a clear idea of their goals, how they will get there, and the skills and opportunities they need to be successful.
It’s possible to do that by sitting down with them and creating a personal development plan for work. This will help them identify their purpose, establish key habits and capabilities, and connect with like-minded peers to keep them accountable. It will also help you manage your training program and keep stellar talent who are in it for the long haul. This can also be a great opportunity to help your employees learn how to stop bad habits that slow down their progress, and instead help them deliver better results.
Establishing a list of current training needs for employees will help make sure that they remain focused on what matters most to them, and eliminate everything that doesn’t contribute to their overall happiness, motivation, and goals.
Enlist Workers to be Teachers
After talking to your employees, you will have enough information to compile a list of areas where some employees excel, and where others might need additional guidance and assistance. If you see that certain employees are proficient in a particular subject that their coworkers are struggling with, enlist them as “teachers” to upskill them.
Employees who struggle to master a skill will likely feel more vulnerable if they are part of a formal training program that is not tailored to their needs. Peers will be more comfortable learning from employees with a strong grasp of a topic. This way, you can make training more fun and engaging for employees. They will be able to learn from each other in a relaxed setting by attending ‘Lattes and Learning,’ or any activity that involves more than a Powerpoint presentation.
Manage Training Costs
Your choice of outsourced or in-house approach to training will affect your budget. It might seem counterintuitive but it could be more cost-effective to seek out an external company for support in your training and development strategy.
There are so many things to consider; it can be difficult to stick to a budget when you rely on your in-house team. Outsourcing gives you the security of an established budget as it eliminates the risks of overspending. Training experts will cover all initial and ongoing costs related to your particular goals in plans and discussions.
Evaluate and Measure Outcomes
The final step is measuring your training program’s effectiveness. Companies that thrive are those able to measure the impact of their strategies and decide which ones to keep implementing.
It’s possible to measure employee feedback against previously set objectives and metrics, and then analyze both successes and failures when trying to figure out how you can improve workplace training and employee engagement.
Final Thoughts
When deciding how to implement a new and impactful training program, you may feel the desire to jump right in. However, to manage your training programs successfully, you must use the right tools, conduct an assessment of current training needs, set a budget, and evaluate and measure your outcomes.
