Many companies understand the value of training for their employees, but often, they limit it to the initial onboarding phase. You might notice that training becomes less of a focus after the first few months. As time goes on, daily tasks can take precedence over the importance of ongoing training.
Investing in your employees’ training brings several benefits to your business. It not only improves their skills and knowledge but also boosts their morale and engagement.
In this article, you’ll read about the advantages of investing in training and how it positively impacts your organization’s overall success. And. most importantly, when you should train.
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Training is really useful when it becomes clear evident that your team’s learning gap comes from lack of skills or knowledge.
In these cases, a thoughtfully crafted program tailored to your needs, including relevant examples, practice sessions, and a way to measure skill improvement, works wonders.
When It’s Time To Invest in Training
Think about investing in training your team in these situations:
- Onboarding: Providing comprehensive training for new hires to ensure they understand their responsibilities, the company culture, and the tools they’ll be using.
- Skill Development: When there’s a need to improve specific skills or knowledge gaps that are hindering productivity or efficiency.
- Technological Changes: Introducing new technologies, software, or processes that require employees to acquire new skills to effectively adapt.
- Promotions or Transitions: When employees are promoted or switch roles within the organization, training can help them excel in their new positions.
- Compliance and Regulations: Ensuring employees are well-versed in industry regulations, safety protocols, and compliance standards.
- Customer Satisfaction: Training can be valuable in roles where employees interact with customers directly, ensuring they have the skills to provide exceptional service.
- Continuous Improvement: Regular training can help employees stay up-to-date with industry trends, best practices, and new methods to continually improve their performance.
- Leadership Development: Training is essential for grooming future leaders within your organization by enhancing their management and decision-making skills.
- Team Building: Some training programs focus on improving teamwork, communication, and collaboration among employees.
- Employee Engagement: Offering opportunities for growth and development through training can boost employee morale and job satisfaction.
Train your staff the whole time they’re employed.
Training your staff throughout the year, and throughout their employ is an investment that will pay off. In short, here are three compelling reasons:
- It’s what employees want. Investment in training is one of the top reasons workers apply to organizations. If you make it clear you’ll offer these professional development opportunities in job ads and through the interviewing process, you’ll get more applicants who are dedicated and come ready to offer their new skills.
- It sparks motivation. Learning new skills can keep employees engaged and dedicated to their jobs. It really helps if you can merge training with staff learning goals.
- It creates qualified employees If you invest in training for your existing staff, you can hire and promote from within. Hiring processes are expensive and time-consuming. Tapping into current talent is a shortcut that can pay off, and if you know the employee, you also have an idea of their work ethic and dedication.
Let your staff use their new skills.
We recently conducted a survey of a professional development course we offered. The results were positive. To illustrate:
- 70% said the course gave them the tools they directly needed for work
- 90% said they had significantly increased competence in the topic
- one person said they used the course to kick-start a syringe exchange program in their community
Exactly the kinds of results we love to see.
However, when we asked how much importance learners’ managers placed on the skills and concepts they picked up, the results were less encouraging. More than a third said their managers did little to let them use their new skills.
Uh oh.
Clearly, investing in training for your health staff is a smart move. It sets employers to have loyal, motivated workers who can do more on the job. Companies that invest $1500 or more for training, per employee per year, average 24 percent higher profits than companies with lower yearly training investments, according to HR Magazine. These figures are proof that training serves the organization well and increases the health of the community.
While many employers recognize the value of investing in training, too many neglect this second step. It’s important that they have to let people use what they’ve learned. For example, health worker training is of little use when that education ends with the last day of class.
Make it Easy for Your Staff To Learn
Here’s the secret to making sure investments in training pay off: make it easy for employees to learn. Then, make it easy for them to share that knowledge. Finally, set you and your staff up for success.
Review your organizational goals before you register anyone in training. Your staff may love a course on creating walkable neighborhoods, but it doesn’t matter if your program’s focus is on oral health. (Read 11 Things To Know About Setting Training Program Goals.)
For instance, when employees are done with a new training program, ask them to suggest new programs or improvements for existing ones based on their experience. Refer to earlier example of the syringe exchange program, which originated in a course forum discussion between two people at opposite sides of the country.
Meanwhile, ask participants to share the knowledge they just learned. Ask them to prepare a presentation to give to the rest of the care team, or have them summarize some of the most salient resources in an email to your whole organization.
Repeat with every person at every educational opportunity.
Start now by thinking about your training programs as part of your company culture and strategic plan. Continue to evolve the program to keep up with best practices, changes in clinical guidelines, or outside research like community health needs assessments.
