Developing a training program for employees means empowering your employees with skills. This then leads to strengthening your organization and overall employee performance. Training programs through a learning content management system help improve communications among employees for enhanced workplace productivity. An employer should know the culture of the workplace; how employees communicate within the workplace; and what the overall objectives of the company are. Keep reading to learn more about how to optimize your training program and how MadCap’s eLearning software can help.
Before creating a training program, it’s imperative to understand the workplace environment to ensure successful delivery and receptive responses from your employees. Knowing the companies’ mission also allows you to create an effective training program geared towards’ continual growth and succession planning.
Key steps in creating an employee training program that is vital to the success of the organization:
1. Conduct research within the market and industry.
As an ever-evolving economy, business leaders should always assess the competition and understand how other companies are creating that golden umbrella within their organization. Consider articles, social media posts, and blogs from renowned business executives. All of them are sure to have a winning team within their companies and for good reason. That information provided can help you build a foundation for training programs for your executive team within your own organization. Workers value job enrichment, flexibility, and career development more than job security and stability.
2. Create focus groups to get employee perspectives of the culture and the environment they believe they work in.
The best source of information about organizational performance and needs are your current employees. Your employees know a lot about what’s going on and what, if anything, needs assessment. They’ll also appreciate your interest in their opinions and provide valuable feedback about what they feel should be improved upon.
- Assess and analyze the needs, desires, and employees’ ideology of what job satisfaction is to them.
- Compare the various work styles and ethics of your employees to the objectives and mission of the organization.
- You can also create a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis if time permits.
This allows you access to see how employees view their work environment, co-workers, and leaders within the organization. Remember, the organization doesn’t run effectively and efficiently if your employees are not learning and developing their skills individually as well as collectively. Read our guide on ‘what is microlearning’ to learn more about how this tactic can aid in retaining more information.
- Establish and prioritize training objectives and focus groups, which could range from cross-training; succession planning or general knowledge for all employees to have.
There are several ways to accomplish this, one way is to make sure your goals are: “SMART”–specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
- Tips:
- convey your purpose for the training
- establish a budget for training
- consider the manpower and time consumption needed for training
- ensure your managers are well versed in the knowledge of the training
- and enlighten everyone involved of the benefits associated with developing the employee training program
- Develop the training content based on the organizations’ goals and learning styles of employees. Interested in learning how to create a learning journey for your employees? Read our guide for more information.
This means you may have different activities for different groups and departments of employees. This also allows you to tailor your training to bridge the skills gap you may have. Keep in mind that you want to include aspects of training that set your employees, the department, and the organization apart from others. The content should focus on what adds the most value to:
- Employees
- Communication skills
- Trade Skills
- Specific to organization or area of expertise (logistics; accounting; etc.)
- Managers
- Retention
- Workplace satisfaction
- Collaboration with co-workers
- Organization
- Positive company culture
- Improving business with customers; vendors; prospects
- Process improvements
Remember: you should engage the learner experience and you’ll need realistic strategic insights to make it work. Employees want to feel valued, and they want to know how developing a training program will benefit them. So, the training needs to be worth those employees taking time from their regular schedule to participate.
Require managers to learn and implement the training content in daily; weekly; monthly; activities. Employees respond positively to managers that can demonstrate skills and look to for guidance.
Your personalized content should have more than textbook information, it should encompass everyday occurrences with a diversified workforce for the best responses. As your managers represent your organization and are usually on the front lines face-to-face with employees, your managers should always have content based on their interaction with their team members. Legal and HR support compliance; your sales managers would typically support coaching and training on customer service and vendor interactions; and your marketing manager could provide content on supporting social media growth and presence.
- Determine how you want to deliver the training:
- Slide presentation
- Visual/oral presentation
- Pamphlets
- Hand’s on
- Workshops
- Seminars
The employees’ learning style will be the determining factor. Just remember that there is always room to improve the training material for future use.
- What are the results of developing your training program?
Observe your employees to see if they’ve taken the information from the training and applied that new knowledge to their everyday work lives. This helps you examine the results of the training program and whether the program caused an increase or decrease in employee productivity, motivation, morale, or communication between employees and managers.
The most visible source of satisfaction is a company’s return on investment (ROI). The ability to measure training programs generates the largest amount of exuberance, motivation, and deliverables when value exceeds all expectations. Businesses and Stakeholders intuitively believe that developing training programs for employees adds value, ROI, as a measuring tool, reassures the intuition using a credible, validated process. And as cultures within the workplace expand, businesses should consider increasing all contributions from employees as an opportunity for growth. A companies’ competitive advantage comes from the talent they hire, train, and continually move to a career path within the industry.
- Potential benefits:
- Happy employees
- Employee achievement recognition
- Company achievement awards
- Increased employee engagement
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Differentiating your company from competitors
Using the right eLearning tool and training manual software, it would be easier for both parties to achieve the company's goal. Let everyone in your organization know when someone completed training and what that means to their growth opportunities. Increase employee morale by presenting opportunities for everyone to participate.
