Training Employees in a Tight Economy
Unfortunately, in a tight economy the first item to be slashed on the company budget are training programs, when in actuality training should be increased. One reason you should be looking to increase your training dollars is that you want to retain your star employees and show them that the organization believes in them and is looking to develop their skills to be even more valuable to everyone.
Let’s look at the different types of training that may be important to your organization.
- Job Skills Training – A responsible organization will take steps to provide employees the means to improve their skills. This is especially true with new hires, who are not fully up to speed and may need a program to help them not only develop their skills but to reinforce the company policies and procedures. This type of training will help off-set the time to answer questions or to re-do a job because it was not finished to company standards.
- Compliance Training – Employment compliance issues are constantly in the news and are always changing. Staying current on compliance issues may be critical to the liability of the company and may be crucial for new supervisors and current management to take. If your company is mandated under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to provide safety training, you may be at risk if you do not comply.
- Employee Development – Helps a company place employees in the right position to reduce turnover and poor morale. Effective training will not only address the needs of the individual employee, but also communicate to the employee the needs of the organization.
- Succession Planning – Training of your star employees into lower, middle, and upper management will give them the opportunity to learn new techniques and to develop new skills. This type of training helps the organization to plan for growth and retirement issues.
- New Supervisor Training – All too often, a good, hard worker is promoted into a lead or first line supervisory role – without any training. By taking the time to analyze the capabilities of the employee and training them into this new role, will safe the company time and money and the individual the peace of mind of knowing what is expected in this new role.
Training, just like other functions, is a process. If you plan ahead and put a good, solid program together, training will only benefit your organization. With proper training, you can transform disengagement into employee engagement.
Trackback URL: http://www.effortlesshr.com/blog/lead-articles/training-employees-tight-economy/trackback/
One limiting factor for all but the largest organizations is the inability to acquire e-learning on a meaningful economic basis. Many of the e-learning providers simply don’t (and can’t) readily make their content available to small and medium sized organizations. Our website, http://www.latitudeu.com (or http://www.latitudeu.com ) is the first completely OPEN, e-learning MARKETPLACE where anyone or any organization can learn, teach or share knowledge or content on virtually any subject one course/one student at a time for free or for sale. This allows large and small training providers alike with a much easier way to sell and deliver their content economically to both the buyer and seller of such training programs and thus allows reach from provider to consumer AND consumer with provider in ways never economically feasible before. In production less than 6 months http://www.latitudeu.com already has over 40,000 active Members and over 300 “courses” on a wide variety of subjects (many free, others very inexpensive). And we’re now working with some of the largest e-learning companies in the world to bring their courses to our website. So we anticipate having literally thousands of courses available within the next year.
For more information please take a look at http://www.latitudeu.com . Sign-up and Membership are completely FREE. If anyone needs additional information feel free to contact me at dave.burta@latitudecg.com or dburta@gmail.com
dave burta
coo, http://www.latitudeu.com
Borrowing from the YouTube Playbook for Training
By: Dave Burta, Senior Consultant, Latitude Consulting Group
It is no trade secret that the half-life of formal learning is measurable in barely more than clock time. And the holy grail of trainers and learners is how to expand that half-life in meaningful ways (i.e., how to make learning
Great ideas! I would also add diversity training to the list. Workplaces have become so fragmented that finding common ground among employees and managers is more critical than ever for companies, and especially their bottom line!
Training is the first thing you should fight to keep on the budget in a tight economy. Training improves employee loyalty and keeps employees engaged in the company. It helps you hang onto the key people who contribute the most to the bottom line.
If you think your company can’t afford it try looking for less expensive alternatives to how you’re currently training employees. Simple changes like moving training in-house and online programs will eliminate the travel expenses you once paid. Before throwing training out the window, get creative and find less expensive options.
Thanks for sharing. Training can transfer very good information and let the org do better.
why not to concider Action Learning? Most of hte time this would not result in increased spending but may provide a greate learning opportunity for all employees?
Technology can help assist in tracking all of the topics you mentioned. Employee performance, role definitions, company goals, compensation management, and more can all be monitored through several software systems. The use of these software solutions will help track business processes more effectively and efficiently and align employees with the overall company expectations.