When was the last time you offered staff training sessions to your employees?
There are some major benefits to staff training, but you have to make sure you organise sessions in a sensible way. If you send everyone off on a training day, that means the office is empty and nobody is taking calls or doing any work!
Annual appraisals are a great opportunity to identify staff training needs and work out which training sessions would benefit your individual employees. However, there are mass training sessions which everyone needs to attend too, such as fire safety, computer updates, and health and safety training updates. In that case, you would have to stagger attendance over time so that the office is always manned and everyone still gets the training they need.
During appraisals, it could be that an employee identifies a training course they would like to go on which isn’t particularly associated with their job at that time. In that case, should you let them go? It really depends on the training course. If your employee is working in insurance and they say they want to go on a flower arranging course, then yes, you can say it’s something they should do in their spare time! However, if they state an interest in going on a communication improvement course or a time management course, then that would be a good option.
Check out this video which talks about why investing in staff training is always a good idea.
That leaves the question of how often staff training should be arranged.
For important staff updates, such as fire training, health and safety, etc, then employees should have these on an annual basis as part of their rolling programme training. Sessions can then be put on monthly and a set number of employees can attend, whilst the rest continue working at their office desks.
Training should be something which is continuous over time, however on the job training is a constant thing. We can all learn and improve and, in that case, having a mentorship programme in place is a good idea, especially for inexperienced or younger employees who are still developing in their role.
The bottom line is that employees are never the finished article, just as a manager never knows it all either. Learning is a lifelong deal and by supporting your employees in their training needs, you’ll benefit, they’ll benefit, and everyone will be happy as a result!