Training is fundamental for any business to improve understanding, skillsets and to encourage employee development. Investing in your employees means investing in your business for the long haul, which is why adequate training can lead to success, whether it’s ongoing training for existing employees or new programs for new team members.

Why is Employee Training so Important?

New employees need to feel supported and confident in their new position, and training will help to accomplish that. Providing a training program will tell employees that you care about their learning and development and want them to feel self-assured in their role. 

For certain roles, such as warehouse work, training is vital for health and safety and adequate operation. 

In addition to this, training will help employees to feel appreciated and that the business doesn’t neglect their ongoing development needs. 

How to Improve Your Training Programs

Think About a Variety of Learning Options 

Individuals learn in different ways, at different speeds. Some may be visual learners, while others may do better with having everything written down. Providing more than one learning option can help employees learn in their best way and access what they need. This could be creating an interactive video program, alongside a full written document, the opportunity to go to presentations in person, a question-and-answer meeting, or learning on the job through on-site training. 

Make Programs Accessible 

If you have video media as part of your training programs, such as employees learning from home by watching a presentation or sending video training to business employees located around the world, taking everyone’s needs into account is crucial.

If you have overseas employees who speak a different language, using a Translation Service can be a great help, especially for very technical and detailed training information. Additionally, you may also want to think about transcription of video content to make sure that information isn’t missed and employees who may be hard of hearing have comfortable access. 

Ask Your Employees

The employees are the ones that are going to be learning after all, so consulting with them about how they would best like to be trained, if they have any suggestions, and if they have any feedback are all good ideas for constructive training. This can help you to formulate a completely tailored training program for the feedback you’ve received from your specific team. 

You may also want to do this in the middle of training with feedback, as it’s always possible certain training methods may not go smoothly in practice. You can always adapt the program if employees don’t seem to be receptive to it or if they would better learn in a different way. 

Make the Program Flexible

If you’re trying to conduct a training program around the full-time hours of employees, on your terms, it may lead to a lack of motivation or finding employees at their least productive time of day, such as trying to implement training after the working day has finished. 

The more flexible you are, the more positively employees will react to training and be in a more productive mindset if they can more easily fit the training around their schedule. This could be offering the opportunity for employees to access the program remotely in their own time, giving flexible deadlines for program completion, or planning to use paid working hours to conduct training instead of trying to fit around existing work. 

This will depend on your employees and line of business, but the more flexible you can try to be, the more receptive your employees will be.