Generally speaking, employee performance affects the bottom line of any organisation. This is because employees are the backbone of any business entity – and any accomplishments or issues encountered by an organisation are directly reflected by the performance of its employees.

As such, it is critical that organisation leaders recognise the importance of employee training programs to augment employee capabilities, knowledge, and skills. It helps to gain a competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced global market. Unfortunately, many organisational leaders still experience gaps and challenges in this arena.

Why is employee training important?

Employee training demonstrates that an organisation is capitalising, not only on high-performing employees but on individuals capable of committing to higher levels of responsibility. 

Generally, effective employee training can provide a range of benefits to a business, such as: 

  • Higher quality output 
  • Less supervision required (and cost savings in supervision) 
  • Better recruitment and employee retention 
  • Better employee productivity 
  • Improved motivation through greater employee empowerment 
  • More flexibility through better skills 
  • Easier implementation of change in the business 

What are employee training programs, and how to create one?

Traditionally, training is the process of enlarging the knowledge base and skills of a workforce to facilitate them to perform their jobs more effectively. Therefore, training in any form helps individuals to acquire advanced job-related skills and knowledge. 

That being said, training programs are a series of educational processes that focus on sharpening existing skills, concepts and changing attitudes to enhance the performance of employees. So, while employee performance depends on multiple factors like job satisfaction, knowledge and management, there is still a strong relationship between training and employee performance. 

Employee training programs enable organisations and employees to attain different goals, like: 

  • Improving employee morale
  • Creating job security and supporting employee progression and promotion
  • Enhancing employee engagement and overall job competencies.
  • Supporting new employees 
  • Increasing marketing effectiveness
  • Introducing new technology, systems or other changes 
  • Addressing changes in legislation 
  •  Supporting higher standards of customer service and production quality 

Overall, ambitious organisations that seek to steer their development and mission in the right direction need staff that is exposed to continual training. 

This training can be delivered through differentiated programs, services, and capabilities. 

However, such programs need to be developed, envisioned, executed and sustained by well-trained individuals.

You can create a training program at your organisation by following these tips:

  • Exploiting your team’s input to determine their precise training needs.
  • Establishing a training schedule that suits every team member.
  • Implementing team-building sessions across different departments while working towards the same organisational objectives.
  • Focusing on good team-building skills to unite employees around a common goal.
  • Explaining how every individual contributes to the overall team training objective to get their buy-in and give them a sense of purpose.
  • Catering to the different learning needs of teammates.
  • Conducting follow-ups after training sessions.

Types of employee training programs to consider

Orientation training program

Orientation training programs are the first training programs encountered by new employees when they first join a company. 

Essentially, these programs are great to ensure a smooth transition for employees. This is because they focus on welcoming new employees and inducting them into the company. 

Orientation training programs can be either formal or informal. They also typically take place in the first week of the job to ensure new recruits get a hang of the corporate culture, mission and values of the company. They are often handled by the HR department. 

Onboarding training program

Orientation training is a subset of a larger training program called onboarding training. Onboarding training is a sequence of corporate-specific training sessions that occur over time. These sessions cover critical topics explicitly focusing on new employees, which is separate from compliance training. 

For example, topics on how to use tools or specific software, execute communication practices, and access support resources. 

onboarding training program
Photo by Christina Morillo

In other words, topics that allow employees to get a quick start with their work. Also, leaving employees to self-study manuals or written guidelines is also an onboarding training option.

Product training programs

Product training programs cover any products a company offers and goes through the features of each. This training program not only teaches employees how to use a company’s products but also demonstrates the unique selling point for each product the company offers.

As such, product training programs extensively cover features, warranties, and commonly asked questions about a product. Thus, ensuring employees become one with the products or services, for internal and business purposes. 

product training program
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

Corporate training programs

Corporate training programs seek to enhance the different skills of employees to improve their individual performance. In practice, they primarily focus on increasing the company’s rate of productivity.

In fact, skills learned through corporate training programs make workplace environments more disciplined, friendlier, engaging, and open to the exchange of ideas.

Growth Academy Asia’s Corporate Training Hong Kong is a classic example. 

Quality assurance training programs

Quality assurance training programs help employees to better understand quality assurance activities. They also help improve processes that ensure final products meet set quality standards to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Generally, Q/A training establishes trust and integrity with customers, reduces wastage, improves profit margins and accelerates growth. All whilst building a company culture that prioritises quality products, and meaningful customer relationships that foster customer loyalty.

Sales training programs

Sales training programs are quite similar to product training programs. However, they go a step further to emphasise selling points rather than granular product details.

Unlike product training programs, sales training programs focus on helping employees effectively advocate for a product, and navigate complex customer questions. Overall, sales training equips employees with the knowledge they require to actively market and sell a company’s product.

sales training programs
Photo by Kampus Production

Soft skills training programs

Soft skills training programs principally focus on the development of personality traits that promote a fluent and cooperative working environment. During such training sessions, employees typically learn communication skills, project management, and strategic leadership.

In specific situations, employees can be taught other productive technical knowledge required to employ a specific software or tool. Overall, soft skill programs build a collaborative, and efficient culture within an organisation.

Read more about VR Soft Skills Training

Diversity and inclusion training programs

Diversity training programs help create awareness for diversity-focused issues. Within the work environment, such programs primarily seek to facilitate positive interactions while reducing prejudice and discrimination among employees.

As a result, they encourage employees to embrace people of diverse cultures and backgrounds. For example, colour, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, and physical and mental ability. Generally, the institution of a diversity training program can help reduce the risk of workplace discrimination and harassment claims.

Technical skills training programs

In today’s technology-driven business landscape, technical training is more indispensable than ever. This is because more organisations seek to innovate to keep up with the competition. 

A technical training program essentially explains the use of technology or tools at an organisation. This type of training has an extremely variable duration as it depends on the complexity of the company’s software tooling. This means that the more sophisticated things are, the more the need to explain deeper. 

Technical skill programs are recommended for a specific group of employees. For example, there’s no point in training a receptionist how to operate a factory conveyor system. As such, these programs usually consist of targeted courses that impart specific additional skills, like social media management or data analysis. 

Team training programs

Team development programs foster team dynamics, and ensure that employees have access to the same professional growth opportunities. They also improve employee morale, collective efficacy, satisfaction and team effectiveness.

Check out 10 Tips For Effective Team Training At The Workplace

team training
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Customer care and client communication training programs

Businesses flourish when clients are happy. Customer care and client communication programs help ensure effective communication by all representatives of the company.

This goes beyond the presentation of products and wooing clients, into the manner one offers the product or service.

Leadership training

Long-term employees typically grow in competence and take up higher positions. To prepare them for these leadership roles, you can offer them leadership training. 

These, often multi-day, managerial training courses help employees to gain deeper insight into leadership. They also help senior management to identify employees with strong leadership potential. To effectively conduct such training, companies can hire external coaches for group or one-on-one or group sessions.

Compliance training

Typically, compliance training covers responsibilities directly tied to the job and additional matters like occupational safety and security. Or anything employees must know, either for legal reasons or to ensure the organisation runs efficiently. 

Overall, compliance training can vary from company to company. For example, a restaurant business will dictate different compliance training from a technology startup.

Concluding remarks

All things considered, employees are the most valuable asset of an organisation. 

This is because they take responsibility for enhanced customer satisfaction and the quality of products and services. 

Without proper employee training and development opportunities, employees would be unable to accomplish their tasks to their full potential.

As such, employee training is a vital tool to not only maximise the performance of employees, but also enable them to become more efficient, productive, motivated, and innovative in the workplace. 

So, with effective employee training programs and opportunities, employees are capable of assisting an organisation in achieving a competitive posture in today’s dynamic global market.

For this reason, it’s the sole responsibility of organisational leaders to realise the importance of employee training programs’ impact on the performance and evaluation of employees.

Related Series: 14 Effective Employee Development Ideas For 2023 | Leader Vs Boss | What Are The Expectations From Leadership Training?