It’s Learning at Work Week so, as an employer, why not learn more about employee training and development? 80% of employees find training beneficial to their productivity, leading to plenty of long-term benefits for your business. Although easily overlooked, training and development is a valuable investment to help your business thrive.
What is training and development?
Whilst training and development is a handy bridge term, there’s actually a distinction between the two:
- Training improves specific skills and knowledge areas to support staff performance in their current positions. This tends to be short term and focused, for example, a specific course addressing a skill.
- Development is an ongoing process that focuses on long-term employee growth and performance: being both an immediate resource to them and preparing them for the future.
You’ll want to strike a synergy between employee training and development to better support your workforce, ready to drive results for your business.
Why is training and development important?
Training and development can be crucial to the success of your business. It improves your staff’s skills and boosts confidence.
If you’ve noticed any performance gaps in your team, training is an obvious way to address them. After identifying specific areas of improvement during the appraisals process, you can send them on tailored sessions to support these challenging areas: this will result in a more well-rounded, skilled and efficient workforce.
Training and development isn’t just a way to optimise your workforce – it can be a legal requirement, too: think professional qualifications, health and safety, and so on.
The benefits of training and development
By investing in training and development today, you’ll be securing long term benefits for the future of your business: boosting your reputation, overall productivity and, ultimately, profit.
Attracting staff – Today’s workforce value continuous learning, so promoting your offer of training and development schemes when recruiting will help you attract quality employees.
Boosting retention – Training and development is also an effective way to improve retention rates, with 76% of employees more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training. Ongoing development makes employees feel valued and invested in, helping them feel more satisfied in their roles. Your retention rates are even more likely to soar if your development includes progression opportunities, with 94% of employees likely to stay longer with a company that supports their career growth.
Improved productivity – Skilled, knowledgeable staff can get more done, use up less management time and even show initiative to make improvements based on their own perceptions.
Expansion – Depending on the training, it may open up expansion opportunities for you, upskilling team members to offer new services or, for instance, open another premises on your behalf.
How to effectively implement training and development
There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach for training and development. You may handle the development aspect through mentoring, shadowing and other initiatives like networking opportunities for staff or CSR programmes.
Training on the other hand may be useful where you have noticed specific skill or knowledge deficiencies that could be bridged through a course; or, alternatively, where employees show desire to achieve a relevant professional or academic qualification. If you’re unsure, why not ask for employee feedback to get a better gauge?
In order to truly reap the benefits of investing in training and development, you’ll want to foster a culture of continuous improvement within your company.
There are several ways to encourage this culture: from giving employees allocated hours to train within their work week/month, providing staff with stipends to spend on training programmes that support their role; to ensuring management set a standard of growth and resilience for your team.
There is always the fear that you will invest in training and then they will take their newfound skills elsewhere. Sir Richard Branson has words of wisdom on this point: “Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough they don’t want to.”
Get specialised training and development support
If you’re ready to invest in your workforce, we’re here to help.
We offer a range of training programmes, available both in-person and online. There is something for just about every budget and training need. Get in touch today to find out how we can help.
