Types of Employee Training

Reasons to Host Employee Training Program

Organizations in which employees receive continuous training remain on the cutting edge of industrial developments. Regardless of whether the training is conducted in the form of full-fledged scheduled training sessions or one-on-one format, employees are always in need of refreshers and training so that they perform their jobs well and contribute maximum in achieving business goals.

Top companies take employee training and development as a business investment because they understand that this investment eventually pays offs – both on an individual and organizational level.

From an organization’s perspective, employee training results in:

• Profit and growth
• Deeper skill succession pipelines
• Reduced turnover rate

From an employee’s point of view, training and development are crucial for:

• Career progression
• Financial growth
• Enhanced productivity and competency

As you hone the development process of every role, your business objectives get clearer and your employees get the right direction to succeed and grow in their future job roles.

Modern Types of Employee Training

A training program is an opportunity for a business to polish its employees’ skill. Hence, your training program should also cover the areas where employees lack or want to improve specifically. Along with that, there are several training opportunities for a business even outside the specific role of an employee such as the management training or training to improve communication/soft skills.

Regardless of whether you schedule the managerial training in-house, arrange them externally, or apply for online employee training  programs, all of these training aspects will help in improving the business productivity.

Now, let’s have a look at modern types of employee training which are adopted by successful organizations as a part of their general training programs to help their employees develop a holistic skill set.

Managerial Training

Many organizations keep the internal hiring policy for employees and help them in moving up in better positions. Similarly, when an employee spends a considerable time in a position, he/she may be considered for a better managerial position. Hence, when an organization holds such practices then managerial training is inevitable.

Managerial training is offered to enhance the skills required in terms of business management. This particular training type may cover various aspects such as proper and timely delegation, ways to maintain motivation in your team, how to provide proper feedback or coaching, or maybe a more technical skill that would be required to take up the managerial position. For instance, if an organization uses a particular software tool for tracking employees’ time then the employee will have to get technically trained before he/she leads the position.

Does Managerial Training work for your organization?

If your company prefers to cover managerial vacancies with current employees that are striving to grow professionally, managerial training will help a lot

What is needed?

Managerial training takes time, so you need to know what positions you’ll need to cover by developing your employees for at least 1 year ahead.

Modern companies have a strategic plan of development for 5-10 years ahead and tactical plan for at least 1 year ahead. This tactical plan almost always provides for new job titles.

Top management should align such “job title demand” with L&D department. In its turn, L&D department will look for internal staff that can be developed to fit the role and proposes them to pass the appropriate course.

The managerial training program obviously needs to be aligned with job title preferences/requirements.

Orientation Training

The bigger the company, the harder is the process of a new employee onboarding. To start working at the company’s pace as soon as possible, a new employee needs to quickly understand the following:

• Company’s Mission and Values

• Corporate culture

• Hierarchical structure of the organization

• Company’s processes

• Internal infrastructure (software, security, transport  etc.)

This information can be delivered to an employee through orientation training. The training is usually conducted by the Human Resource department. However, for more specific training, some other departments may also provide design training programs such as Compliance Department, which is more about awareness of rules and regulations and internal controls.

Does Orientation Training work for your organization?

Orientation training is needed when it takes too long for a new employee to start moving at a company’s pace. The stated standard orientation period in most countries is 90 days. If it takes longer in your organization, orientation training is worth the investments.

You can measure the orientation time in your organization by making a simple internal research.

What is needed?

You need to develop your own employee orientation program. Please refer to Employee Orientation Checklist developed by Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety.

Employee orientation program can include the following information:

• safety,

• the work environment,

• the new job description,

• benefits and benefits eligibility,

• the employee’s new manager and coworkers,

• company culture

• company history

• the organization chart

Technical Training

This type of employee training depends on the job role and responsibilities. While you may incorporate technical training in your employee training program, this could be both in terms of the current job role or the job role that you are expected to take up after promotion. Technical training is aimed at educating the employee in more technical aspects of a position. For instance, you must be fully familiar with the use of different software that you may require to perform your day to day tasks. Similarly, you must get familiar with proper system usage so that you can work efficiently and error-free. All of this is required to fulfill your job role and the same goes for other job roles as well. This is indeed an extensive training and needs more than one training session to complete.

Hence, regardless of the technical level of your employees, the room for improvement is always there. Technical training is difficult as it involves different aspects such as content writing or data analysis. It’s a technical way to make your employees perform their job in a more efficient and effective manner. As technology advances with time, this type of training is inevitable. Every time there is a change in the technical tools or if the organization adopts new software tools, this training will be needed to keep a smooth flow of operations and to stay updated with the latest developments.

Does your organization need to employ Technical Training?

If your employees’ day-to-day job involves usage of complicated software products your organization will benefit from technical training

What is needed?

To employ technical training in your organization, you need mentors and content.

World leading providers of software understand the need for technical training for their customers, so they create the infrastructure for such process. For example, Microsoft has created the network of Microsoft Learning Partners to distribute knowledge related to their products.
Ask your software provider for technical training assistance. If there is no such service, you will need to use your internal expertise to create your own courses.

Product Specific Training – PST

This type of training incorporates information about the organization’s offered products or services. The training can be conducted for both new and existing employees. For new employees, the training is usually conducted after the orientation session. The training allows new employees to fully understand the product or service specification so that they can further offer to customers and to perform their jobs the right way.

However, considering the existing employees, the training might be offered to provide them with a refresher on product or services. Another reason for existing employees to attend this training to get on board with any new service or product or feature introduced by your organization.

Does your organization need to employ Product Specific Training?

If your company sells any kind of product/service – product specific training is a must

What is needed?

You will need to develop a lot of content. The most common types of content for such training are:

• Interactive sales demos

• 2D/ 3D product simulations, guided-demos, and walkthroughs

• Product manuals / how-to guides

• Animated product banners, collaterals, how-to guides, and manuals (Print/Web/Multimedia)

• Product pre-launch and post-launch training

What content would work for you depends on what learning strategy you are going to choose for your specific case. It can be fully offline learning, blended learning and fully online learning. For latter two you’ll need to develop an online course.

Health, Safety and Security Training – HSSE

While not many organizations train their employees for health, safety, and security, this is one of the most important training to keep your human assets safe just like you take measures to keep the data/information secured. This type of training may incorporate both theory and practical exercises to train employees. Such kind of training is necessary for people at all levels regardless of their position or job roles. Moreover, the health aspect of this training is more related to ergonomics, which help employees in staying healthy, avoid getting injured at the workplace and to meet the demands of various job roles such as sitting for long hours. While companies can conduct these training sessions in-house, the majority of organizations take the help of external practitioners to provide adequate training to employees.

Does your organization need to employ HSSE?

HSSE training helps the employees to keep themselves safe from workplace injuries or work-related accidents. While all organizations need to create awareness among their employees, this particular training is more important for organizations which are involved in the production of the hazardous substance. However, for other organizations, the training may include fire drills, evacuation plan in case of fire or earthquake, measures to take during workplace violence, etc.

What is needed?

To deliver HSSE training  try  the following three-step approach:

STEP 1. Decide what training your organization needs. Identify the skills and knowledge needed for people to do their job in a safe and healthy way.

STEP 2. Decide your training priorities.

STEP 3. Choose your training methods and resources:

• giving information or instruction;

• coaching or on-the-job training;

• training in the ‘classroom’;

• open and distance learning;

• computer-based or interactive learning.

The bottom line

Employee training is an inevitable aspect of a growing organization. It not only develops the individuals’ skills but it also increases business’s worth and growth rate. An organization that offers a strategic employee training program, keeping every aspect of the organization and employees’ training needs into consideration, is the one who establishes the best customer portfolio.

Moreover, it helps employees as well as the business to develop itself with time and to stand out from the rest. It brings satisfaction, happiness, and confidence amongst employees and helps them to perform better. Similarly, corporations that take employees training and development as a crucial and important business practice are always advancing in the diverse working environment and never fail to bring new ideas for the organization’s improvement.

Nonetheless, a strategic employee training program is the one that starts with hiring a new employee and continues throughout their employment.