It has never been more urgent for your company to offer effective training programs to expand workforce skills. But the need for training does not automatically mean your company knows the formula for reskilling and upskilling staff. If you struggle with the timing, goals, and delivery mode for courses and wrestle with justifying the cost to your bosses, there are simple solutions for improving corporate training and preventing the failure of skills development programs.
In a recent survey, McKinsey found that 69 percent of organizations are doing more skill-building now than they did before the pandemic. And they’re investing heavily in development programs. In its annual training industry report, Training magazine found that U.S. companies spent $82.5 billion on workplace training in 2020.
Look at it this way: Your competition provided 55.4 hours of training – the average in 2020, according to Training magazine. Employees know that if you’re not nurturing the skills of your staff, your competition most likely is. Recruitment and retention in the near and distant future could depend on your commitment to high-quality development programming.
The payoff for employees is clear. But investing in your workforce also pays off for your organization and your stakeholders:
Now that we have clarity on why you should dedicate resources to employee training, let’s look at the obstacles that could arise as you implement or expand worker development programs – and easy fixes to get you back on track.
In a dynamic workplace where technology and tactics are ever evolving, it can be difficult to keep pace with the upskilling needs of your employees. One approach is to ask your employees what they want to learn and give them the liberty to enroll in training that suits their needs within a set budget. Another approach is to tell your employees what you need them to learn and make the arrangements for their training from the top down, which provides the appropriate coursework but can feel officious.
Solution: Complete a thorough needs analysis to determine who needs training and how the learned skills transfer to the job being done. SHRM recommends a four-step process:
Once you’ve pinpointed your organization’s needs, you can decide if managers will set and possibly even present the training programs or if employees will have the freedom to select their training courses based on the parameters established by the analysis.
There is no more certain route to a collective staff eye roll than dictating new training courses that have no relevance to the work your employees actually do every day. Employees look at this kind of generic training as a waste of time at best and disrespectful at worst.
Solution: Override employee resistance to training by marketing the program as you would any product or service you’re trying to promote.
If your PowerPoint presentation elicits still more eye rolls, perhaps the long-term vision you have for your employees is too abstract. Or maybe the workday is so hectic that your staffers simply do not want to make the time for another task.
Solution: Gamify your training programs. There is no human being in any workplace anywhere who does not like to win. Here are some ways to get competitive juices flowing by handing out rewards:
These easy solutions not only help engage individual employees, they also boost interest in the topic, build a culture of continuous learning in your workplace, and encourage trainees to pay better attention during training because they know they have to present relevant information at a team lunch-and-learn.
For all its perks, the work-from-home life can be very isolating and frequently boring. Add a lineup of dull, required upskilling modules and you could be facing a mass exodus from your Zoom training room.
Solution: Implement a social learning element to your training programs. Chat features and collaborative activities create a sense of connectedness that pays off for your company. LinkedIn Learning reported that workplace learners who use social features watch 30 times more training content than learners who do not.
In corporate training, one size does not always fit all. If your training is too basic or too generic, your employees check out and get nothing from it. Likewise, if it’s too complicated, they can’t keep up and get nothing from it. You want a program that’s just right, designed with relevant training materials and content for your company’s specific objectives.
Solution: Customize training for your organization’s needs. USF’s Corporate Training program, for example, delivers on-site or live online programs designed to train your employees at scale. Amazon, Citibank, and Bristol-Myers Squibb are just a few of the top companies that partner with USF to create tailored programs for their employees.
There is no question that scheduling is one of the biggest obstacles to continuous workplace learning.
Solution: On-demand or live-online training courses provide the flexibility busy working professionals need. With no commute or long trip to an off-site training facility, your employees do not need to make childcare arrangements or hotel reservations. They can set their email notification to “Out of Office” and get down to learning at their desk or in their living room.
Even the most casual employee development program produces data. If you’re not using that data to determine the overall progress of your training, spot problem areas in your lessons and recognize employees’ efforts, you’re missing an opportunity. But you are also missing out on the metrics that help you evaluate your return on investment.
Solution: Monitor your training analytics. This can be as simple as measuring productivity before and after the program or quantifying positive customer feedback after training. Or you can evaluate your training using the Kirkpatrick Model:
Let’s get real about what corporate training costs. On average, companies spent $1,111 per learner in 2020. Midsize companies spent about $580 per learner. If you have a tight budget, it can be hard to convince leadership to invest in employee training.
Solution: Make a presentation about the return on investment and watch the approvals for training roll in. Going cheap does not pay off:
Corporate Training and Professional Education at USF offers cost-effective, flexible, and market-relevant programs to meet your team’s development and career needs. As part of our commitment to improving corporate training for individuals and organizations, USF offers industry-recognized certification programs and standalone courses that can produce high-impact results in your workplace.