Training and development at the organisation refer to initiatives taken by employers to upskill/ reskill or enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) of their workforce.
These initiatives could be frequent training sessions by experts, role reversal days, project based specific roles, mandatory certification courses and more for both employees’ and employer’s growth.
In this article, we’ll discuss training and development in detail-
What is Training and Development?
Training and development are meant to boost the performance of employees, making them more efficient and ultimately helping them achieve both personal and professional objectives.
Objectives of Training and Development
One of the main objectives of training and development is to add value to employees’ work life.
- Skill Improvement specific to job position that includes technical knowledge, expertise on certain tools, project management techniques, soft skills required and more
- Performance Enhancement to refine existing competencies for achieving expected KPIs
- Change Management to help employees adapt the changes be it in work mode, hierarchy, industrial trends, technological advancements and more to stay ahead of the curve
- Employees’ Experience can be one of the objectives of training and development programs at workplace to keep employees satisfied, dedicated and motivated
Difference between Training and Development
Though training and development terms seem similar, they are different based on their scope and applicability.
Training initiatives are highly precise and associated with specific KPIs while developmental programs are generalized to achieve broader skill set and utilise them in multiple situations
Importance of Training and Development
Importance of training and development are as follows:
- Enhanced Productivity: To keep employees updated with latest procedures, automated tools and simplified methods to complete their tasks, training and development programs are necessary
- Building Future Leaders: After the performance review process, HR professionals can suggest for developmental programs as per the skills and competencies to potential leaders
- Increased Consistency: Trained employees would perform more uniformly and consistently, resulting in better quality and quantity of work
- Cross-training: Training can be beneficial for team members overall, if certain employees are trained. For example, if team manager is trained, knowledge can be disseminated easily to their team members
- Better Retention Rates: When employees have the continuous learning expedition,they feel valued, and they strive to be at the organisation for longer time
What are the Key Elements of Training and Development?
The key elements of training and development are-
- Program Management: If training program is not well- managed, schedule is unstructured, no frequent sessions, nothing to test the theoretical knowledge, then the aim of program will go in vain, and no employee will be trained
- Identifying execution gaps: Before scheduling and deciding about the training programs, make sure to identify existing gaps in skills and knowledge of your employees
- Alignment with organisation’s goals: If training and development programs are not aligned with the overall vision, mission and values of organisation, they would lead employees nowhere. Thus, it is necessary to cross check if training programs are aligned
- Innovative ideas of engagement: Many a times employees unwillingly, just because they are mandatory, complete training and development certifications. While at other times, many employees consider them a sheer waste of time. So, to encourage and motivate employees, try some innovative ideas
- Invest in cutting-edge technology: From AR/VR to gaming platform, this digital era offers numerous technologies to make developmental initiatives more engaging, more productive, leaving the better recall value
- Measurement: As an HR professional, it’s your responsibility to keep track of the progress and effectiveness of the training and development initiatives. From employees’ feedback, changes in behavior to impact on company
Training and Development Process
Training and development process has five steps-
Finding the need of training and development
The first step of training and development process is to find the need-if your employees need training, in which segments, what are they lacking and more to structure the KRAs and KPIs of your training initiatives
Chalking out the KRAs and KPIs
After finding the needs, clearly structure responsibility areas as in what program will be created, who will conduct sessions, how session will be structured and most importantly decide what would be the key performance indicators to measure the outcome of training and development sessions
Deciding the method of training
Every training program must have pre-defined method and flow- what would be the ice breaker, engagement activities, inspirational stories, better retention of skills taught, takeaways, tests, etc. Method could vary from virtual to face-to face, team members to team managers, non-time limit to time limit and method that suits your workforce the best
Implementing the program
No matter how well you are prepared, everything is dependent on how well the plan is executed. So, to make sure the training and development program will be implemented well, create checklist beforehand, choose the right channels of communication, send reminders, check your devices involved, have a mock session if required, and more
Monitoring and evaluating the results
To monitor the impact of training and development programs, you must find the provisions to track the KPIs, analyze and report them for informed decisions in future
Summing Up
Effective training and development programs not only help employees with essential skills, knowledge and abilities but boost their overall confidence, performance, career growth and retention rates.
P.S. After every performance review, you can decide how to upskill/reskill your employees. To identify training gaps, potential leaders and knowledge your workforce requires, you can deploy simplest HR software- HROne and can prepare for training programs effectively!