5 ways to establish an effective training plan for your employees

Today, workplace training and development is a strategic necessity for organizations. When implemented appropriately and thoughtfully, training and development programs are the cornerstones of the organization’s success. 

No matter how skilled your employees are, there’s always room for improvement. According to a survey conducted by ClearCompany, more than 60% of employees agreed that having a training and development program is crucial and important to the organization.

Also, 94% of employees are more likely to remain in the organization that provides a training and development program as they feel valued and supported and hence, more motivated.

Thus, training and development are crucial in cultivating a positive organizational culture, reducing employee turnover, and enhancing its reputation and profile.

What is a training and development plan?

A training and development plan is a process curated by an organization to improve its employees’ job performance. This may include job-specific skills improvements such as understanding how to use a company’s equipment or other hard skills such as programming. It can also mean soft skills such as project management or leadership skills. 

An organization can develop a plan in three ways:

1. In-person training is when an employee is engaged with either a mentor or attached to a group. It is conducted face to face.

2. Online training is when an employee is learning via a digital communication setting, where they have the advantage of pausing, resuming, and rewinding their training program whenever they want.

3. Self-Learning provides employees with full autonomy over their learning. It can be conducted using web-based instructions or even one-on-one appointments with their trainers to suit their own schedules.

Your organization is free to use any of the listed methods when establishing your training and development program. As long as your employees are motivated to learn and perform better, your program is on the right track.

How to establish and create the most effective training plan

Here are five ways to create the most effective training plan to engage your employees and keep them motivated in your organization.

1. List out your organization goals

The first step would be to understand what are the goals of your organization. This allows you to better structure the plan to meet the organization’s overall goals.

2. Undergo skills gap analysis

Next, you have to find out how your employees’ skills contribute to the organization’s goals. Identify their needs and what are their desired skills. By doing a skills gap analysis, you can better craft a training plan with specific learning objectives. 

It can be useful to split your learning objectives into three broad categories and curate your training plan’s activities that target all three aspects.

Motivation

How can you help your employees understand what is their purpose in the organization? 

Why should they learn a new skill or develop their current skills?

By working with their motivations and identifying their driving force at work, you are more likely to change their work behaviors over time.

Skills Mastery

What is needed for your employees to perform well in the job?

Critical Thinking

What should your employees know to excel in their job? What is the critical knowledge for their role, and what is the relevant content that should be added to the training plan.

3. Planning and implementing your training plan

Following the gap analysis and training objectives, you can now start building your program. For job-specific skills training, you may consider blended learning as part of your program. 

Blended learning is when online learning and in-person training sessions are combined. It can be implemented whereby online training videos are uploaded prior to in-person training sessions to ensure that your employees are from the same starting point. You may also use videos as a form of recap session after the classroom training. This would effectively maximise the benefits of your employees’ time as well.

As for soft skills training, you may consider incorporating mentoring sessions or group discussion programs.

4. Conduct 1-to-1 meetings with employees

Your employees may not be comfortable with approaching you with questions on their training program. As such, it would be helpful for you to schedule occasional check-ins with your employees, asking if they have any concerns and providing them with any resources they may require.

You may also consider collecting feedback from them at the end of every month to check if your employees are retaining the information learnt and if they are becoming more productive and efficient.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of your training plan

Your training plan should be constantly reviewed and analysed. At the end of the training, you should conduct an evaluation to determine if the training goals and objectives were achieved.

Review the feedback you have collected from your employees and identify any weaknesses in the plan. You can then revise and adapt your plan if the objectives and expectations were not met.

Gearing up for success

As the saying goes, ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. It is therefore crucial to establish a training plan that would essentially benefit your organization and retain your best employees. We have provided you with this outline so your organization can get started on creating your own training plan for your employees. By following these guidelines, you can have the plan up and running in no time! 

We would love the opportunity to hear from you! Tell us more about how you are going to set up your employees’ training plan!