Training and development programs, also known as learning and development programs, are among the most important drivers of growth in any organization of any size. Investing in employee development and employee training is no different than investing in manufacturing or production equipment to improve your company’s output.
Emerging technologies like machine learning and AI are already upon us. These technologies are introducing new market shifts that will send ripples throughout the business world. A well-trained workforce can adapt more efficiently to these changes and help maintain the organization’s competitive edge.
Beyond that, investing in employee training and development can increase employee engagement and satisfaction and improve new employee retention. Employees who see a clear path for professional development and advancement within your company are less likely to leave their positions in search of better opportunities.
In this guide, we’ll discuss human resources strategies for the training and development of your workforce, the different types of training available, their principles, and some of the top training and development strategies for 2024.
What Are the Different Types of Training in HR?
Before we discuss different types of training in HR, let’s first discuss training strategies. As their name implies, training and development strategies refer to an organized approach to creating a training and development program for your employees and staff.
A well-thought-out learning and development program provides professional development for your employees. It ensures they have all the necessary skills and competencies to perform their jobs and increase overall business effectiveness.
A good example would be a learning and development program that teaches your existing workforce how to use a new technology or adhere to the new company policy. As another example, you could develop a learning and development strategy for onboarding that will allow new hires to become accustomed to working within your organization or company faster.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss the different types of training in Human Resource Management.
Technical Training
Technical training refers to a type of training in which employees are taught to use technical equipment they haven’t used before, but its use significantly benefits the daily operations of a business and helps achieve the company’s business goals.
For example, technical training can include teaching your employees how to format documents properly using Microsoft Word or restaurant servers how to process orders and payments. As such, technical training is often performed in-house, though it can be administered externally. If you want to promote talent development, it helps to give your employees some form of certification for their skill development.
Quality Training
Quality training is really important, especially in production-focused environments. It’s mostly associated with quality assurance, preventing, detecting, and eliminating non-quality products and items from production. Providing quality training gives your employees and your business a competitive advantage.
Not only does it increase the quality of the product, but it also offers fantastic results when it comes to cost savings, especially since quality training ensures that only the finest products reach the end consumer.
Skills Training
Skills training includes enhancing team skills and the proficiencies necessary to perform the job or perform it more efficiently. For example, you can train an administrative assistant on how to answer the phone or a salesperson on how to present the necessary data to the customer and nudge them into making a purchasing decision.
Most of the time, skills training is provided in-house and mostly through mentoring.
Soft Skills Training
Soft skills are people skills, and they often refer to perceived personality traits, communication skills, and personal habits an employee has that characterize how they treat other people. Soft skills might also include how to answer a phone, or they may come in the form of ethics training.
In some workplaces, the necessary soft skills might include maintaining small talk and establishing rapport, while in other workplaces, it might include sexual harassment training. Teaching employees to listen and communicate actively can be considered a soft skill in different workplaces.
Managerial Training
Managerial or leadership training occurs when the company identifies a member of the workforce who is a suitable candidate for a promotion to a managerial position. This training encompasses skill and soft skill training and, quite possibly, technical training sessions.
A good example is training a manager candidate to use a particular computer system for scheduling used by the rest of the administration and other managers. This type of training includes email etiquette and even some HR management basics. It’s important to note that this type of training is often part of company succession planning.
Safety Training
Safety training is often provided to employees working in hazardous environments to prevent workplace-related injuries and accidents. This type of training is particularly important, and many HR professionals believe that it should be incorporated across all industries, as it often includes basic stuff, like following evacuation plans, fire drills, and workplace violence procedures. However, safety training encompasses several different things, including hazmat safety, eye safety, etc.
What are the Principles of Training Employees?
An overly complicated career development strategy and training initiative isn’t a recipe for success. There’s sophistication in simplicity, and taking things slow and simple in the beginning might be a winning combination.
With a steady approach, your employees aren’t just learning new skills and upskilling. By employing effective development plans, your employees will be motivated to use the newly acquired skills.
To achieve high motivation in your workforce, several important features should be part of your development initiatives:
- Employee Needs Assessment—Before developing a learning program and offering new learning opportunities to enhance your employees’ skills, conduct a thorough needs assessment. You need to determine the specific skills and knowledge your employees might lack and need to perform their jobs more efficiently. This ensures that the training you develop is relevant to the job and targets the actual skill gaps rather than perceived ones.
- Defined Objectives—Each training session should have clear objective metrics that align with the organization’s broader goals and business strategy. These objectives should be specific, attainable, and directly connected to the employees’ jobs to ensure effective training.
- Interactive Training—Active participation in learning and development programs enhances the learning experience and learning retention, so make sure that the training is interactive and encourages employees to engage through discussions and practical exercises.
- Variety of Learning Methods—People have different learning styles. While some learn best by relying on visual aids, others may do so auditory, and some through kinetic activities. So, it’s best to structure your program as a mixture of everything and include videos, lectures, demonstrations, and group activities.
- Assessment and Evaluation—Now, we circle back to assessment. As mentioned, effective training strategies determine the mechanics for assessing learner’s knowledge and skills during and after training. This measures the effectiveness of your learning and development strategy and helps you identify areas where your strategy might need improvement.
What Are the Top Training & Development Strategies?
In this section, we’ll discuss the top training and development strategies for 2024 that can help you get your learning and development efforts off the ground, save valuable resources, increase retention rates, and future-proof the organization or business. Please note that these aren’t categorized in any particular order and are equally important or dependent on one another.
Get Management Involved
Your training program needs management’s support to succeed. Management needs to champion the program and give the employees the time and motivation to take the training (unless it’s mandatory) and get the most out of the learning experience.
If you make the training mandatory and management supports your decision, learning and development will slowly become a part of the corporate culture. If you regularly offer quality training, you might even be better able to attract top talent to your company or organization.
It’s a good idea to involve management in mentorship roles, such as having your company’s CEO teach management skills or your Head of Sales offer negotiation skill development.
Create a Formal Program
Creating a formal program ensures that everyone gets access to training regularly and that this training isn’t just a formality later shoved under the carpet. Formal training has to have set and defined goals, rewards for employees who undertake and complete the training, tools and/or other resources necessary for training completion, and a review process that will adjust the goals wherever necessary—not everyone has the same learning skill.
On-the-Job Training
Most individuals learn their job skills from work experience, which means that on-the-job training or more interactive training methods should be a part of your training program. This helps learning retention, and it often leads to better results, as it’s easier for employees to learn while working.
This is a preferred training method among the employees (where applicable) because they can learn new skills without disrupting their daily routines and adversely affecting their productivity. It also saves the company and workforce money since employees don’t have to go off-site training.
Leverage the Benefits of eLearning
Remote training and online courses have risen in popularity and become one of the most recognized training methods during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have remained popular since many employees work remotely and can’t attend in-person sessions.
This approach to remote learning allows employees to learn new things—particularly soft skills—from the comfort of their own homes and according to their own learning styles.
If you decide to make an online training course for your employees, consider making it interactive by combining the learning content with games, quizzes, and other game-type interactions to keep them engaged and improve their learning retention. This is known as “gamification”.
Another major benefit of remote learning is its accessibility. The training content can be accessed from any electronic device, such as a laptop or a smartphone, eliminating the need for a physical classroom. Unlike a physical classroom, eLearning scales with the number of learners.
However, this approach has a downside: It requires a lot of time to design and update the training materials. Also, it’s not the best fit for employees who prefer face-to-face interactions with instructors.
Instructor-Led Learning
This is a classic training and development method and one of the most popular employee training techniques that can be done en masse. It usually takes the form of a lecture-style presentation with slideshows or interesting videos and provides direct interaction with instructors and other employees.
This particular learning and development strategy is great because any questions that might arise during training are often responded to quickly and effectively. However, the downside is that employees can’t move through the training at their own pace, and it’s not suitable for remote workers.
Cross Training
Cross-training refers to training an employee hired to perform one job with the skills necessary to perform a new job function. This type of training is particularly popular among employers, as it provides them with a more agile workforce capable of offering support in times of need, eliminating the need to outsource work.
On the other hand, employees find this type of training beneficial, as it enhances their skill set, prepares them to offer support when needed, and inspires collaboration between teams. From the HR management perspective, this type of training significantly reduced costs associated with recruiting and onboarding new team members.
Job Shadowing and Mentorship
Job shadowing allows employees to “shadow” or follow and observe other professionals to gain insight into their work. It is more commonly implemented to promote easier onboarding by allowing inexperienced individuals to work alongside professionals. This allows them to sharpen and hone their skills from those already experienced.
This easily transitions into mentoring later; an experienced professional will pass on their knowledge, skills, and work experiences to their younger colleague as they leave the organization in search of better opportunities or retirement, which is why your organization needs succession planning.
Get Help with HR Strategies for Training and Development Today
Training and workforce development strategies are crucial for your company or organization’s growth, adaptability, and competitiveness. However, structuring these strategies isn’t as easy as it might seem. If you need professional help optimizing your training and workplace development strategies or your HR management efforts, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team has several experts in the field of training and development and adult education.