Unfortunately, in a tight economy the first item to be slashed on the company budget are training programs, when in actuality training should be increased. One reason you should be looking to increase your training dollars is that you want to retain your star employees and show them that the organization believes in them and is looking to develop their skills to be even more valuable to everyone.
Let’s look at the different types of training that may be important to your organization.
- Job Skills Training – A responsible organization will take steps to provide employees the means to improve their skills. This is especially true with new hires, who are not fully up to speed and may need a program to help them not only develop their skills but to reinforce the company policies and procedures. This type of training will help off-set the time to answer questions or to re-do a job because it was not finished to company standards.
- Compliance Training – Employment compliance issues are constantly in the news and are always changing. Staying current on compliance issues may be critical to the liability of the company and may be crucial for new supervisors and current management to take. If your company is mandated under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to provide safety training, you may be at risk if you do not comply.
- Employee Development – Helps a company place employees in the right position to reduce turnover and poor morale. Effective training will not only address the needs of the individual employee, but also communicate to the employee the needs of the organization.
- Succession Planning – Training of your star employees into lower, middle, and upper management will give them the opportunity to learn new techniques and to develop new skills. This type of training helps the organization to plan for growth and retirement issues.
- New Supervisor Training – All too often, a good, hard worker is promoted into a lead or first line supervisory role – without any training. By taking the time to analyze the capabilities of the employee and training them into this new role, will safe the company time and money and the individual the peace of mind of knowing what is expected in this new role.
Training, just like other functions, is a process. If you plan ahead and put a good, solid program together, training will only benefit your organization. With proper training, you can transform disengagement into employee engagement.
