Why you need to provide training for your staff

Even though we all know how important it is to provide training for staff, some companies still fall behind when it comes to investing in employee development.

Particularly when budgets are tight, corporate training can often take a backseat in favour of more ‘essential’ spending. But there are many reasons why staff training should always be considered an essential.

Here are some of the reasons why employee training is so important for any company – whether you’re a large corporate organisation, medium-sized business or small startup.

Training Improves Employee Performance

By investing in proper training for all employees, you can expect to see big improvements in the work performance and productivity of your staff.

Learning and development is crucial to ensure that each person has the skills and knowledge they need to do their job. By making sure managers are taking the time to create professional development programs for each team member, staff will feel a lot more valued, and you’ll soon see higher job satisfaction and a positive work culture overall.

It’s very important that staff training is continual and ongoing, with adjustments being made so that new targets and areas of development are continually identified and addressed. Corporate training should never be just something that you tick off once a year to satisfy your boss or HR department – it requires ongoing investment of your time, focus and energy, to get the best results.

Training Bridges the Skills Gap for Staff

Training will also help bridge the skills gap in your organisation, reducing any mismatch that exists between the skills that you need for your business, and the skills that your employees actually have.

Proper training for staff isn’t just about making sure they can do the job at hand. It’s also an important part of keeping employees up-to-date with any changes in technology and their industry. This is a win-win situation, as you’ll be helping them to continually improve their skill set, while they’ll be bringing back relevant industry knowledge and new skills to the company.

In doing this, you’ll also have a better chance of attracting and retaining other high caliber employees, as these days people want to work for employers who are committed to investing in professional development.

Training Keeps Your Organisation Compliant

Corporate training is also critical for keeping your staff up-to-date with workplace compliance requirements.

We’re seeing that businesses are currently operating in an increasingly complex risk and compliance landscape. Failing to meet state and federal compliance requirements can result in huge fines, legal proceedings and a loss of reputation for your company. Not to mention profits. By having staff participate in compulsory compliance training, you’ll have peace of mind that you’re meeting necessary business requirements.

Through compliance training, staff will be able to recognise and respond to important issues such as workplace safety, harassment, bullying, data management and IT security. This will help minimise risks for your company, making training a very wise investment indeed.

A Training Course About Training?

That’s right – if you’re keen to learn more about why training is so important for staff, check out this practical online course.

A short eLearning course, The Importance of Training is particularly great for managers and team leaders who want to dedicate time and effort to develop the members of their team. It’ll help you further understand why it’s worth investing time and money into training, while helping you build a solid training development plan for your team.

The course begins with the well-known story about two managers discussing training options:

One manager asks, “what happens if we invest in our people and then they leave us?”

To which the other replies, “what happens if we don’t and they stay?”

The course is presented in an entertaining and easy-to-understand format, through the use of animation and ‘spot the learning style’ activities to test your knowledge.

Exploring Kolb’s Learning Cycle

That’s not to say the course materials are at all lightweight. While certainly entertaining, the online course covers some serious and worthwhile topics.

You’ll look at the theory behind how people learn and how you can take that theory into the real work environment to shape training development plans. And explore the Kolb learning cycle – named after its creator David Kolb. If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s a really good way to think about learning and development.

Kolb suggests that there are four main stages of learning which most employees go through in order to learn effectively. Gaining an understanding of these stages, and how they flow into each other, can help you create better training programs for your team.

Developing a Training Plan

This eLearning course will also help you in developing better training programs, or plans, for your team.

The instructor explains how you need to start by identifying the needs of an employee, through questioning and assessment. This will help you to establish if any knowledge or skill gaps exist, that can then be addressed.

The skill gaps you identify will form the basis of the employee’s professional development program, or learning plan, as this course refers to it. Learn about ‘smart targets’ and ‘stretch learning goals’ – after taking this course, you’ll have a whole new vocabulary when it comes to learning!

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.