How to Develop an Employee Training Plan

If you aren’t formally training your staff, you’re not alone. 31% of companies do not formally train their employees. If you are part of that group, you may want to consider implementing a program or plan soon. Training your employees properly is one of the most important things you can do at the workplace. It can improve finances, strengthen employee happiness, improve knowledge among staff, lessen weaknesses that you may have as a company, expand the basic knowledge for all employees, and intensify productivity.

Not only can you expand knowledge and productivity, but you can also use training as a retention and recruitment tool. A study by Udemy showed that 70% of employees agree that training could help them learn to focus and manage their time better. A study by Udemy also found that 51% of employees would be more likely to quit their jobs if they didn’t have proper training. Employees want to be trained and take it very seriously.

Creating Your Own Training Plan

You spend a fair amount of money on-boarding your employees, so you will want to create a meaningful training program that will lead to their success. In order to train your employees, you need to create a training plan for your program. What are your goals for the training? Do you want your employees to be on the same page? Are you testing their skills? What do you think will make your company successful from this training experience? Once you have your goals in mind, you’ll be able to create a training program that will benefit your business.

1. Set up goals and objectives

You will want to create a list of goals and objectives that could be obtained in a few training sessions. Identify what isn’t working in your company now and figure out if there is a way that you can fix that problem. Do you need to give a master class to explain a concept to all employees? Are your employees not caught up with industry standards? You should also think about ways that you can monitor success after training. Are you trying to increase sales through training? Are you try to improve retention rates? By how much?

When creating a program, you also need to consider who you are training. What are the employee’s positions and what are they expected to learn? You’ll want to make sure that your training program stays on track with what is expected from each individual.

2. Create a curriculum

After establishing your goals, you will want to develop a curriculum that will be interesting and beneficial for your workers. You have a few different choices when it comes to creating a program. Are you going to create a power point with activities involved? Are you bringing an outside guest/source? Or are you using generic industry sources such as videos and manuals? Are you going to have your employees take an outside course? You can even decide whether or not a conference or workshop would work better for your team. There are many ideas to consider but you should try to develop the training program specifically for your employee’s needs. This may take some trial and error, but eventually you will find a solution that will work for your team.

3. Scheduling

Provide training every few months instead of annually. When you teach employees new skills more often, they will not only become more knowledgeable, but will do so at a quicker rate. If you are only teaching them new skills at the end of the year, they will have missed months of opportunities to grow during that time. It’s also important to provide training on a regular basis because training builds on itself, and it’s a chance for you to ensure that your employees are following company guidelines and policies.

4. Action Plan

You’ve given your employees knowledge and new skills, so now what? After creating a plan and giving your employees information, you’ll debrief them and give them guidelines as to what you expect from them as you move forward. Follow up with them to see what progress they have made. You can even gather feedback from employees so you can figure out what needs to be fixed and what can be improved next time you train.

Once you have invested in a training plan that works for your team, you’ll see results. And when your employees know what they are doing and have direction, you will see that they will be more motivated to achieve company goals.