Workplace training and development are crucial for any organization that aims to equip its employees to address modern-day challenges. Unfortunately, employee training often does not receive the priority it deserves.
Forbes reports a staggering 59% of employees receive no workplace training, a statistic that underscores a troubling trend. However, this also presents a significant opportunity. By investing in comprehensive employee training, organizations can play a crucial role in bridging the skills gap—a gap so severe that over 11 million jobs in the country remain unfilled. This underscores the urgent need for effective employee training but also offers a beacon of hope for the future.
Let’s explore the various methods an organization can employ to enhance the skill sets of its employees.
Importance of Employee Training in Enhancing Workplace Effectiveness
Employee training plays a pivotal role in enhancing workplace effectiveness. In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, organizations must stay competitive for long-term survival. Comprehensive employee training is a powerful tool in this endeavor, not only enhancing skills but also equipping companies to tackle a host of modern-day challenges, thereby gaining a competitive edge.
Here’s a detailed list of the associated benefits that underscore the significance of employee training programs in modern business environments.
Enhanced Employee Performance
Employee training has a transformative effect on organizations, but more importantly, it empowers individual employees to reach their full potential. While attributes like willingness and determination are crucial for success, the relevance of the knowledge needed to perform tasks can diminish over time.
Therefore, even the most diligent and determined employees will not achieve the desired success unless their knowledge is continually updated. Employee training introduces new knowledge that addresses emerging problems in the workplace, inspiring a workforce that is always ready to take on new challenges and empowering them to excel in their roles.
A Strengthened Strong Workforce
Organizations should strive to retain the same employees over many years. However, achieving this goal is challenging if employees can no longer align with the evolving needs of the organization. Furthermore, employees are unlikely to remain with an organization that shows little interest in their development.
Therefore, employee training serves a dual purpose: it helps retain employees for extended periods and ensures that their skills remain relevant and up-to-date. This not only provides a long-term return on investment but also fosters a sense of belonging and value, making employees feel integral to the organization’s success.
Better Organizational Productivity
The primary goal of employee training is to enhance an employee’s performance at work. However, the benefits extend beyond individual contributions, positively impacting the organization as a whole.
A well-trained workforce possesses unique qualities such as the ability to adopt innovative methods for completing tasks, the capacity to adapt to dynamic market conditions, and efficiency in their roles, which minimizes waste.
These factors contribute significantly to reducing inefficiencies and optimizing processes. As a result, consistent and thoughtful employee training ultimately elevates an organization’s productivity, turning routine operations into opportunities for growth and improvement.
Enhanced Motivation and Engagement
There is a profound sense of satisfaction that comes from acquiring new skills. Learning can significantly boost a person’s motivation at work. The connection between learning and happiness is largely due to the ease with which an employee can now handle tasks that were previously challenging due to limited knowledge.
As employees learn and grow, their enhanced ability to solve problems not only makes their daily tasks more manageable but also fuels their motivation. This sustained enthusiasm encourages continuous personal and professional development, fostering a more engaged and committed workforce.
Overview of Different Types of Employee Training
Organizations can utilize various types of employee training programs. Several factors differentiate one training program from another, including the unique needs of individual employees.
Let’s explore the different types of employee training and discover why each is beneficial to the organization.
1. Orientation Training
Orientation is an employee training program designed to familiarize new employees with their work environment and the organization as a whole. This type of employee training aims to help new hires navigate their workplace, introducing them to their managers and colleagues.
Orientation training programs typically conclude with an overview of the employees’ roles and responsibilities, followed by a question-and-answer session with the human resources manager. These programs can range from a few hours to several days in duration, depending on the organization’s structure and the specifics of the roles.
2. Onboarding Training
Onboarding is a comprehensive training process that organizations use to introduce new employees to their roles and the overall company culture. Unlike orientation training, which is typically brief and focuses on the basic logistics of working at the company, onboarding is a more extensive process. It includes integrated tasks specifically designed to help new hires understand their responsibilities and how they fit into the larger organizational structure.
Onboarding often extends over the first few months of employment, ensuring that new employees are fully integrated and comfortable in their new environment. This thorough approach aids in building a solid foundation for long-term success within the company.
3. Compliance Training
Compliance training is an umbrella term that encompasses various employee training programs. Unlike other types of employee training, compliance training is critical, often government-mandated, and specific to particular industries.
These programs include different courses relevant to a company’s activities, location, and sector.
Below is a list of the most common types of compliance training courses:
- OSHA Compliance Training: OSHA compliance training educates employees about potential hazards, emergency procedures, safety protocols, and the correct use of safety equipment. This type of training is particularly crucial in industries where physical risks are prevalent, such as manufacturing and construction.
- Cybersecurity Training: In today’s digital age, employees need to be trained on how to protect sensitive information. Cybersecurity training covers several vital areas, including the importance of using secure passwords, recognizing phishing attempts, and protecting customer data.
- Ethics Training: Many organizations uphold ethical standards that guide their practices. Ethics training educates employees about the organization’s code of conduct, emphasizing honest decision-making and identifying potential conflicts of interest.
Additionally, organizations can offer other courses to enhance compliance with essential safety measures and improve employees’ ability to handle workplace issues, such as sexual harassment, substance abuse, and violence.
4. Product/Service Training
Product or service training is essential for employees to effectively promote and support the offerings of their organization. Also known as customer service training, it equips staff with detailed knowledge about the features, benefits, and potential applications of a product or service. It enables employees to answer customer queries accurately and handle any issues with confidence.
Additionally, it ensures consistency in how information is conveyed to customers, enhancing the overall customer experience. Product/service training is particularly vital for sales and customer support teams, as it directly impacts sales effectiveness and customer satisfaction. This training is ongoing, adapting to updates and new product launches.
5. Leadership Training
Leadership training is yet another type of employee training program. It is a type of program that is suitable for all employees as it intends to give leaders and prospective leaders the skills they need to succeed in positions of leadership. Leadership training focuses on targeting leaders’ weaknesses and educating employees on how to become leaders, manage change, think strategically, influence others, communicate, and make decisions. Leadership training can also focus on specific skill sets depending on the needs of an organization.
Leadership training and development programs are training programs that also help organizations nurture future leaders. It is usually better for an organization to grow its leaders, who can take over whenever there is a vacancy at the top. An in-grown leader is better than one who has little knowledge about the organization and has to learn the ropes before they can execute their leadership responsibilities.
Leadership training alleviates these challenges by nurturing future leaders within the company who remain ready to take over and lead when one of the company’s top managers retires and leaves a leadership gap.
6. Conflict Resolution Training
The workplace brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds, each with unique personalities, goals, and perspectives. Conflicts often arise from these differences, whether they relate to opinions, project timings, or deadlines. Other factors, such as personal ambitions, racial biases, and varying viewpoints, can also trigger workplace disputes.
Ensuring peace within the workplace is crucial, allowing employees to foster healthy relationships with their colleagues. While conflicts are common, they are also preventable. Pollack Peacebuilding specializes in helping organizations like yours achieve freedom from conflicts and their adverse effects.
The company strongly advocates conflict management as an essential skill for all managers. Regrettably, many managers lack effective conflict management strategies, often because these skills are not taught in their academic courses. While possessing strong interpersonal skills and high emotional intelligence is beneficial, it is imperative that managers actively pursue conflict management training. Without these skills, unresolved conflicts can significantly disrupt workplace harmony.
Benefits of Conflict Resolution Training
Conflict resolution training is the tool needed by any organization that desires social cohesion and employee collaboration. It is a training program that equips employees with the necessary skills to deal with misunderstandings and alleviate needless tension.
Here’s a list of some associated benefits of investing in conflict resolution training programs for your employees and the organization.
- Empowered Employees: Conflict management benefits can extend far beyond immediate benefits. Many organizations have admitted that conflict resolution training has helped empower their employees, who have become confident over time and express their views openly and with the utmost respect. In retrospect, these gains mean that conflict resolution training can prevent the occurrence of conflicts in the first place. If employees can say what they mean and show respect for their colleagues, an organization no longer needs to worry about tensions and conflicts. These employees also enjoy stronger bonds because they exist in an environment of trust.
- Solutions to Diversity and Inclusion Issues: Conflict resolution training also promises solutions to diversity and inclusion issues in the workplace. The details of the program encourage employees to understand and appreciate the perspectives of others. By teaching empathy and understanding, conflict resolution training will create an environment with a strong social network that remains free of conflicts.
- Improved Productivity: In addition to reducing workplace tensions and fostering collaboration, conflict resolution training promises increased productivity. Conflicts have negative consequences for an organization, including disrupted workflows and hindered productivity. Conflict resolution training equips employees with the necessary skills to help them communicate during conflicts and address any issues effectively and promptly. The fast resolution of conflicts will leave enough time for employees to focus their energies on work tasks, which makes them as productive as they should be.
- Improves Employee Morale: Conflict resolution also improves employee morale, which is critical in the search for employee collaboration. Conflicts create a negative work culture built on mistrust, and conflict resolution training promises the exact opposite. Your employees will understand the need to maintain healthy relationships with co-workers, which then improves their morale and job satisfaction.
- Improves Innovation and Creativity: Peaceful employers also feature admirable levels of innovation and creativity. Conflict resolution training isn’t just about resolving workplace disputes. It harnesses diverse perspectives and fosters employee innovation and creativity. Your employees can only implement creative ideas when they learn to appreciate differing viewpoints.
7. De-Escalation Training
You may have witnessed minor incidents in your organization unexpectedly escalate into major crises. Such occurrences are often perplexing, leaving many wondering why a seemingly small issue could trigger such a significant response. The reason is straightforward: those involved lack de-escalation skills.
De-escalation training equips individuals with the techniques needed to prevent conflicts from intensifying, ensuring minor issues can be resolved peacefully. We are here to provide the necessary skills to ensure that these situations are handled effectively and do not recur.
Let’s explore the benefits of de-escalation training in managing challenging situations and preventing potential conflicts.
Improves Communication
One of the primary causes of conflicts is miscommunication. Therefore, the first benefit of de-escalation training is improved communication, which makes employees proficient as active listeners and good communicators. De-escalation training is most suitable for managers, who will gain skills that will help them communicate with their subordinates and de-escalate potential conflicts before they become full-blown crises.
Comprehensive de-escalation training includes training on how to share ideas with others and how to influence them to buy into an idea and want to see it succeed. All these different aspects of communication skills are what make up the biggest part of de-escalation training, which are critical in intervening as soon as there are warning signs of a situation about to escalate.
Builds Trust
People who trust one another are less likely to engage in any confrontations, which explains why trust building is an important benefit of de-escalation training. There are diverse de-escalation techniques that are designed to help create stronger bonds between co-workers or subordinates.
If a manager is to de-escalate a conflict situation, the parties involved must trust that they have their best interests at heart. Still, building trust should occur within the shortest time possible for effective de-escalation. So, how can one gain the trust of warring individuals as fast as possible?
De-escalation training skills are suitable for the workplace environment because they make it easier to build strong collaborative relationships and gain the trust of another within a short time. Still, de-escalation training targeting all employees makes everyone ready because the workplace will remain oriented toward the same de-escalation goals.
Conflict Prevention
Conflicts in the workplace are never good for business, and preventing their occurrence remains a major priority for organizations. Leaving conflicts unresolved makes room for distrust and dissent among employees, who will then lose their ability to remain productive. De-escalation techniques will not only help prevent conflict situations from escalating, but they can also help prevent these conflicts from occurring in the first place.
De-escalation training equips employees with skills on how to identify conflicts, see the warning signs of a conflict that is about to escalate, and the skills necessary to diffuse the situation. Most importantly, de-escalation training focuses on the core issue, which also translates to long-term solutions for everyone involved in a conflict.
Improves Collaboration and Progress
De-escalation training imparts a varied set of skills for employees, including making them feel seen, heard, and understood. People tend to get angered when they feel ignored. De-escalation training recognizes the human need to be heard and seen, and then it capitalizes on them to help individuals work as a team.
De-escalation training doesn’t essentially create open collaboration, but it is considered a by-product of de-escalation skills. By stepping in to facilitate positive communication amongst warring employees, employees improve the chances of collaborating and sharing new ideas at work.
8. Communication Training
One element that makes life worth living is effective relationships. Unfortunately, many people struggle to build and maintain relationships, whether it is between family, friends, or co-workers. Communication is the one factor that improves relationships across the board. But what is the real meaning of better communication?
Better communication entails the sharing of information in ways that allow other people to get the message while also listening to them with empathy and understanding, calmly and effectively, and learning how to work with others and not against them.
Communication skills training is also considered soft skills training, and it comes with significant benefits, including the following.
Improved Self-Awareness
A heightened awareness of what you are saying with your words and your body constitutes self-awareness. Communication training will help your employees understand what other people are saying and understand why it is important to respond to them clearly and effectively. Your organization might find employees with suitable hard skills but who lack soft skills, such as self-awareness.
Communication training is what will make these employees whole by filling in the gap in their missing skills. These employees will go ahead to create a peaceful workplace because they can control their body language, words spoken, and overall approach to communication.
Improves Teamwork
Communication training will help your employees articulate their ideas and thoughts in clear ways that are clear for everyone, reducing conflicts and misunderstandings. Soft skills encourage employees to engage in open dialogue, which then fosters a culture of mutual respect and trust among employees. Employees who trust one another will work together as a cohesive team that works well together more than apart.
Enhances Productivity
Communication training has the potential to catapult productivity in the workplace. It is hard to see the connection because it is not an obvious one. Communication training improves productivity in the workplace by streamlining tasks, which then maximizes efficiency while minimizing errors. Soft skills training should become one of your must-have toolkits because these skills will quickly add to your profits.
Boost Customer Interactions
Communication training imparts critical soft skills to your employees, and these skills are critical in industries where employees interact constantly with customers. Communication training will help your employees master verbal and written communication skills, practice active listening, and adopt customer-centric language.
As a result, soft skills training enhances customer interactions by improving your employees’ ability to understand how to interact with customers.
9. Diversity and Inclusion Training
Hiring people from diverse backgrounds, putting them in a work environment, and expecting that they will thrive in their relationships will not work well in any environment. Diversity and inclusion training is a training program designed to help your team go further and deliver on the benefits of inclusion in the workplace.
Let’s explore some of the benefits of diversity and inclusion training.
A Positive Work Culture
Every employee seeks and yearns for a positive work culture when they wake up to go to work. However, a positive work culture is missing in many workplaces because many employees do not experience that sense of belonging.
Diversity and inclusion training enhances an employee’s ability to form strong relationships with others, which then translates to the experience of connectedness, oneness, and a sense of belonging.
Employees who share a strong connection will work together toward a common goal, indicating that there is an intricate link between diversity and inclusion training and a positive work culture.
A Resilient Workforce
Diversity and inclusion training is associated with a resilient workforce that can work together through business challenges. Diversity and inclusion training essentially seeks to equip employees with skills that can help them overcome challenges that arise out of differences beyond their control, such as a disability or cultural or racial differences.
If an employee understands how to thrive in an environment where they are essentially different, they can survive any challenge that comes their way.
10. Quality Training
Quality assurance training is an employee training program that helps employees better understand the standards of quality in their organization and why it is important to maintain these standards at all times.
In addition, quality assurance training seeks to improve employee processes that ensure that the final product or service meets the quality standards expected of such products. There are several benefits that organizations get to enjoy when they incorporate quality assurance training into their workplace programs, including:
- Undeniable customer satisfaction
- Trust and integrity as a brand
- Reduced wastage
- Improved profit margins
- Accelerated growth
- Loyal customers
- An educated workforce
11. Technical Skills Training
Technical training skills are the exact opposite of soft skills training in the workplace. In the workplace, employees have hard skills when they possess job-related competencies and abilities to complete specific tasks.
On the other hand, soft skills are personal qualities and traits that define how an employee works with others. Technical skills training programs are designed to build core technical skills that will help them navigate the technical aspects of their jobs.
12. Safety Training
Many managers consider putting together a safety training program a challenge. However, an organization can suffer the consequences of not equipping its employees with suitable measures to deal with safety crises.
Given that your employees are your biggest asset, investing in this type of training program is one way to ensure that they are always safe and prepared to deal with any safety issues.
In its most essential form, workplace safety training programs provide the workforce with knowledge and skills on how to carry out their daily duties safely for themselves and their co-workers. A suitable safety training program includes guidelines and instructions on how to identify risks and hazards and how to deal with less dangerous incidents.
A safety training program in the workplace improves its incident reporting culture, which is considered critical in averting even more severe damage and helps prevent incidents from occurring.
Safety incidents are common in the workplace, and a safety training program should help your employees:
- Know when to warn and alert others to a hazard BEFORE it happens.
- Handle a safety situation DURING its occurrence.
- Let the rest of the team know about a slipping hazard or wet floor they should avoid AFTER an incident.
Tips for Selecting the Right Training Programs Tailored to Organizational Needs
An organization does not need to implement all the training programs outlined in this guideline. There is a need to select the right training program that is most suitable to meet the unique needs of the organization.
Here are a few tips to help you select the right training program for your organization.
The Goal of the Training Program
You should choose a training program based on your goals. For example, coaching is an important program for teaching leadership and emotional skills.
Consider the Audience for Training
You should choose a training program that suits the needs of the audience that needs the training. If the organization has new employees who need to get acquainted with it, then an orientation and onboarding training program is most suitable.
Expected Challenges
Effective training requires time, money, and other resources from the organization. By assessing the cost of a training program, an organization can decide whether it is worth investing in.
A company should also consider its ability to handle the challenges that arise from the training program, including a budgetary increase.
Examples of Existing Training Programs by Companies
Several companies have established robust training programs to foster employee development and adapt to changing market needs:
Amazon
Through its Amazon Technical Academy, the company offers programs like Associate2Tech, which trains front-line employees for technical roles, even without prior IT experience.
Chipotle
The restaurant giant has invested significantly in employee development, adding over 5,500 remote courses covering diverse topics such as business, technology, and wellness.
Workday
Incorporating tools like its Career Hub, Workday uses its technology platform to develop key skills among employees and to connect employees with learning opportunities across different departments.
Marriott International
This company focuses on leadership and managerial skills through programs like the Global Voyage Leadership Development program and the Marriott Development Academy.
Conclusion
Employees are the backbone of any organization, and a company’s success remains intricately tied to its ability to employ a pool of highly talented and satisfied employees. However, getting a qualified and talented employee is one thing, and keeping them suitably capable, engaged, and motivated requires an investment in effective employee training programs.
One known catalyst for enhancing workplace effectiveness is through employee training. Employee training has, in the past, helped organizations improve the performance of individual employees.
In addition, employee training programs can help keep employees in the workplace for years and ensure their skills do not become outdated. The other primary goal of employee training programs is to enhance an employee’s performance at work. All you need to do is to pick the appropriate training program for your employees.
