Developing your people

Jul 7 2005 By the Evening Gazette

Developing your employees effectively can help to improve the success of your business.

It can assist with building your competitive advantage and equip your employees with valuable skills that your business needs.

When choosing training courses for your employees, it is a good idea to bear in mind that people learn in different ways. Training will be more effective if it meets employees' individual needs as well as your business needs.

Impact of training on business performance

Ensuring that your employees have the right skills is crucial to the growth and success of your business.

The business case for developing your staff is compelling - research shows that training can:

- Increase productivity
- Increase profits
- Reduce staff turnover and absenteeism
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Improve motivation

Training that achieves these results is typically:

- Linked to business goals and performance
- Part of a business strategy
- Focused on setting tangible objectives for employees
- Part of a policy, which sets out who is responsible for planning, implementing and evaluating training

Training methods to fit your business

Weigh up the advantages and disadvantages for each type of training before deciding which type to provide for your employees. Consider the cost, space, and time needed, as well as the return on your investment, for each type of training.

Another factor in determining the most appropriate type of training is whether you think your business would benefit from an injection of new ideas, i.e. whether you prefer to buy training or courses from a specialist provider or whether you want to design training materials in-house.

The choice of training will also depend on what you want your employees to learn and the number of employees that you wish to train, for example:

- Seminars are a useful way of getting across a lot of information to a large audience

- Workshops allow people to practice working out problems

- Role-playing allows staff to learn by practising how they would react in specific situations

Whether you opt for in-house training or send employees to external providers may depend on the resources and circumstances of your business.

External training courses are more expensive and involve sending employees out of the workplace, which could be disruptive to your business.

However, you may not have the skills to train in-house, e.g. instructor-led courses may be the only solution if you are training employees in a specific software application.

You also need to ensure that there are equal rights of access to training for all employees, including home-workers, part-timers and disabled staff.

An e-learning course is one way, for example, of reaching home-workers. Scheduling courses in office hours, during which part-timers are present, allows part-time employees and those with family commitments to participate.

Training methods that suit your employees

People learn in different ways. Matching your training to your employees' learning needs can help you speed up their learning and reduce your training costs.

Talk to your employees to identify their preferred way of learning and include this in a personal development plan. This is a tool employers and employees can use to define training goals and identify steps to achieve these.

It is worthwhile including information on the training resources available to meet these goals and the benefits the employee expects to get from training.

Discuss with each employee short-term and long-term objectives to include in the plan, alternatively you can hire a consultant to do this for you.

Once you understand how your employees learn, you can tailor your training methods to fit their learning style. For example, if one of your employees learns through observation and questioning, job shadowing would be an effective way for that person to learn.

For purposes of training at work, people's preferred learning methods can be broadly divided into active and passive types.

Active ways of learning are by:

- Using initiative
- Doing
- Exploring
- Testing

Passive ways of learning are by:

- Observing
- Questioning
- Interpreting
- Reviewing

Another factor that can influence your choice of employee training is taking into account that some people learn more effectively in group situations and others prefer to learn alone.

After the training

Evaluating the effectiveness of training is a crucial step in building a culture of continuous professional development in your business.

It gives you an opportunity to decide whether the training has been a success and whether more advanced or refresher training is needed.

The best way to do this is by:

- Setting clear objectives beforehand

- Reviewing the impact of the training on the employee's performance

- Monitoring improvements in the performance of the business - use both measurable indicators such as sales and staff turnover, qualitative improvements such as fewer customer complaints and greater innovation

- Asking employees whether the training was relevant and appropriate