Why staff training is important
The right mix of people is essential, but it doesn’t stop there. Developing your team through training enables you to get the best out of your employees – let’s look at why staff training is important for every business.
Of course, the most obvious benefit of staff training is that it enables your employees to do their jobs more effectively – be that more quickly, more thoroughly, or to a higher standard. As well as enhancing strengths and overcoming weaknesses, your staff will work better as individuals and as a team; this can only help to make the company more profitable. Another reason why staff training is important is that it provides greater context for a person’s role: staff who are more aware of their place in the business will take a greater responsibility for their contribution to the bigger picture.
Staff training also encourages confidence amongst your team members. As a natural part of the growth process, they’ll feel more empowered to discuss ideas with one another. This can lead, quite organically, to the development of new products and services that you might not have considered. Your staff have a different perspective on your business, so nurturing their potential can lead to the whole organisation working at a higher level. When business owners are considering why staff training is important, they often miss this point.
Sometimes we hear of a perceived risk in offering staff training – the idea that an employee’s new-found skills and confidence may make them feel they’ve outgrown their current role, and might therefore encourage them to find a job elsewhere. At first glance, this theory seems to make sense, but it’s actually an unfounded worry and only serves to highlight another reason why staff training is important. If your team feel that they’re being offered chances to develop their skills within your company, they’re more likely to feel happy satisfied; this, in turn, means they’re unlikely to look elsewhere.
The training itself can take many forms – even business owners who understand why staff training is important aren’t 100% clear on the best way to deliver it. First of all, you need to know the overall aim of the training. Do you want to improve communication? Is there a specific new skill-set you need everyone to learn? Changes in your business sector may make training essential. The way you deliver the training could be in the form of an on-the-job tailored project that applies the new skills directly to your staff’s day-to-day tasks, or as external “away days” which take everyone out of the familiar office environment. The training could be arranged in-house, or you might find that specialist training organisations like Agenda provide a fresh set of ideas.
An important point to note is that training should be regular. If staff know to expect it, they feel that the job is growing with them. This can combat the feeling of being stuck on an unchanging treadmill, which is also great for staff retention. Regular training also shows new employees that training and staff development is a priority within your business. There’s nothing worse than a relatively new addition to the team being told “we used to have training sessions, but that’s all fallen by the wayside”.
As you can see, there are many reasons why staff training is important to your company. A little time spent investing in the growth of your employees can pay off handsomely – talk to Agenda now to find out how we can help you to bring out the very best in your team!
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