Employee Training Pdf

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GenZ and millennials have declared career growth through continuous learning their #1 workplace priority. And L&D teams have taken the cue: 72% of employee training programs focused on skills development the following year.

If your training program is in the remaining 28%, your employees may be ready to leave for companies that have better career development paths. This makes it all the more imperative to engage and retain your teams with upskilling and career advancement opportunities in your company.

Training is more than just investing in smarter employees. A well-deployed training program leads to a stronger, more competitive company.

Here are some ways to tie your training goals into larger company objectives:

Implement trainings that improve your sales team's skills. As a main driver of company revenue, this is a crucial area for L&D teams to focus on and prioritize. Programs that focus on sales development with specific training and constant coaching help teams close more deals. Sales coaching and sales enablement initiatives can help you measure the ROI of your training efforts with increased sales.

A robust onboarding program can boost new-hire retention by 50%, saving the company thousands in churn costs. Plus, a standardized onboarding program can increase new-hire productivity by 62%, which also boosts employee engagement.

L&D programs that include training in new areas are a huge draw for prospective employees seeking opportunities to learn and grow their skills. Just like Gen Z employees, millennial workers place great importance on growth opportunities when considering a new job. Likewise, employee development programs help retain valuable employees by supporting their growth and offering opportunities to expand their skillset within the organization. Here are 7 steps to create employee development plans that work - and fill critical skills gaps.

The first is a centralized process and takes a traditional top-down approach. L&D departments or training managers are the sole investigators and decision-makers on what employees need to learn. Managers use their understanding of employee knowledge gaps to prioritize learning needs and make course recommendations.

The downside to top-down analysis is that it typically involves a lot of guesswork, as managers try to assess what employees know and what they need to learn to do their jobs more effectively. Courses are created without team member input, meaning they often miss the mark on actual training needs.

The second method is a decentralized, bottom-up approach. With this system, employees tell their managers or the L&D department what their training needs are, and then L&D manages the system. Instead of using guesswork to dictate training needs, L&D teams can immediately prioritize employee's requested learning topics and organize their fulfillment.

In-person training refers to any method that requires the learners' physical presence. Activities include classroom-based training, seminars and workshops, hands-on training, and watching instructional videos or reading manuals on-site.

Typically, in-person training programs are more expensive and logistically challenging to organize. Businesses have to spend money on in-person trainers, physical training materials, and sometimes travel expenses and venue costs. They can be a scheduling nightmare as you need everyone to be available at the same time and in the same place.

Over the past decade, a growing number of companies have gravitated from in-person to online training. The pandemic fast-tracked the move to a remote-first work environment, and organizations around the world have reaped the benefits of full online training. Traditional in-person instruction is largely restrictive compared to modern online training methods, which make it easier to learn anywhere, at any time.

Online employee training, sometimes called e-learning, takes place entirely over the internet. Online training can include online courses, simulations, webinars, mobile learning, and collaborative learning experiences.

A survey by Vyond found that 51% of employees prefer self-guided online training. That isn't surprising, given online training is much more flexible than in-person training, enabling employees to learn at their own pace and convenience. It creates an environment where learning becomes an integral part of daily life and company culture.

Blended learning, sometimes called hybrid learning, combines online training methods with in-person training. For in-person or hybrid companies, blended learning can be a bridge between legacy programs and 100% online learning. With so many teams working from home, companies are increasingly seeing the benefit of complementing face-to-face training with online learning.

A blended learning program can help L&D departments scale up their training efforts without spending money on more in-person training. For example, you can supplement an on-site seminar with an online webinar, or follow up an in-person training session with virtual practice sessions.

A solution to this problem is microlearning: short learning experiences that take no more than 10 minutes to complete. They present smaller, digestible chunks of material at a time, compared to a typical e-learning course that might take hours or days to complete.

Studies show that microlearning drives higher knowledge retention than traditional e-learning. Microlearning is also easier to produce than longer courses, and easier for employees to work into their daily life.

Peer training happens when employees collaborate to learn alongside and from one another. Peer learning, or collaborative learning, is a more active and engaging way to learn than solo learning. There are many different ways to incorporate peer training into your programs.

Learning platforms are the software you use to create, distribute, and monitor online courses. Most tools bill themselves as learning management systems. While an LMS is the most popular type of learning platform, it has some serious drawbacks for modern L&D departments.

Traditional learning management systems silo the learning process because only admins can create and distribute courses. This also typically involves a lengthy and expensive course-creation process that requires special tools and experience to master.

This democratic approach to course creation gets information to employees faster. It also allows for more feedback and easier editing, so courses are always relevant and up to date. Employees learn quicker and more efficiently. Engagement is higher, with collaborative course completion rates nearly 5x that of a traditional LMS.

Not all training is the same. Each type of employee training has unique considerations and requirements. For each kind of training, you will need to adjust your training techniques to meet the needs of learners.

The onboarding process starts as soon as the candidate accepts the job. You can create a preboarding program or training manual to get them started before they arrive on their first day of work. Preboarding programs should make new hires feel welcome and give them an idea of what to expect on their first day.

An effective solution to increasing course engagement and completion is making compliance training more interactive and impactful by incorporating different learning techniques. Keep employees interested with active learning techniques like quizzes, games, and simulations. And use employee voices to amplify the message of interpersonal training and peer learning.

Customer service training encompasses all the training that customer-facing employees need to represent the company comfortably and knowledgeably. This includes product familiarization, troubleshooting, conflict resolution, and communication skills.

Customer service reps need to be able to field user questions about new features and product updates. Collaborative learning through peer training and interactive learning are effective ways to disseminate institutional knowledge and boost learning retention.

Getting busy sales teams to take time out of their schedule to learn can be a challenge. Encourage continuous training with microlearning courses. These offer a quick and easy way for salespeople to regularly fit training into their busy days.

A major challenge of manager training is finding ways to teach the soft skills that make a successful supervisor: communication skills, bias training, conflict resolution, and goal setting. Remote managers in particular need impeccable communication and organization skills to keep their reports aligned.

A collaborative learning system is uniquely suited to train managers in these skills. Elements like role-playing, peer feedback, and hearing firsthand experiences from colleagues, help your managers learn to lead and work with diverse teams.

Great training is just one aspect of L&D. You also need to measure the efficacy of those programs, collect feedback, and update course materials to make them as useful as possible. These follow-up tasks are crucial for securing bigger budgets and creating a continuous learning culture.

You should also collect metrics to measure engagement, program completion, and relevance scores to understand how employees interact with your courses. Analyzing this data helps identify courses that are due for an overhaul: whether it's because they're too difficult, too long to complete, or even if the content is simply uninteresting.

To do this, you need to demonstrate the impact L&D initiatives have on supporting great business objectives. There are different methods to measure training ROI: both quantitative formulas and qualitative insights from anecdotal stories and experiences. You may want to use a mix of both to inform your learning and development strategy.

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Employee training equips individuals with the skills and knowledge essential for success in their roles. Evolving with technology, this process now blends traditional methods, such as on-the-job training and mentorship, with modern digital techniques, adapting to various learning styles and organizational requirements. This approach ensures employees are continuously developing, keeping pace with the changing demands of their professions.

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