Should Your Small Business Invest in Formal Employee Training

Although well-trained employees will perform better on the job, many small business owners can be ambivalent about it, resorting to ad hoc job training to teach the basics.

Since employee training programs impact their limited budget, they are concerned about investing in a structured approach to employee training because they might receive a negative return on investment if employees leave.

Conversely, they will have problems if employees stay, in which case, the business will have to cope with the consequences of having an insufficiently trained workforce.

However, if you’re a small business owner, you should approach finding and keeping employees as something that’s just as important as lead generation and customer retention.

Your company will flourish with the right people on board and people who perform their work well. While nothing beats hands-on experience, hiring a video production company to create training videos and use many other well-established techniques is also a good idea.

4 Effective Training Systems

Let’s look at some superb ways to train your employees:

#1 Training videos: Since video technology has made huge advances over the past two decades, many corporations have adopted it.

Video training has not only simplified corporate learning and training but has also made it far more effective. Video training has many benefits, like reducing training costs and travel expenses.

It also accommodates diverse learning styles and keeps learners engaged. The great thing about this kind of training is that it can be revisited easily to refresh an employee’s knowledge.

Notable training using this medium to consider is the FMCSA mandatory supervisor compliance training. Reasonable suspicion training can be valuable in a small business where hiring just one new employee can entirely transform the business.

Through being trained in this area, it can be easier to gauge if a potential new hire will try to maintain good health to perform at work or if they have an issue abusing alcohol or drugs, which could harm workplace performance and the business overall.

#2 Hands-on training: Experience is the best teacher. Employees can acquire new knowledge and skills by setting up a controlled environment without making expensive mistakes.

One caveat, however, is to assign the training duties to a qualified trainer. Many companies default to relegating the task to another employee.

There are two problems with this common default way of providing hands-on training: first, the assigned employee may have insufficient tact, communication, and teaching skills; and two, this seasoned employee may pass on any incorrect assumptions, shoddy techniques, lackadaisical shortcuts, and bad habits.

#3 Online Training: Online training offers ease of use and makes it possible for employees to self-pace their learning; as a result, they find training more convenient, immediate, and flexible. The use of online training provides some huge advantages when it comes to resources and location.

Because the Internet has many educational resources already available, a company might be able to enroll their employees in perfectly suitable third-party courses. Additionally, since many employees may telecommute, virtual classrooms replace the time and travel necessary to attend physical classrooms.

#4 Training manuals: A well-organized manual—with a table of contents and chapters that introduce the idea, develop it, and summarize key points—will allow employees to learn at their own pace. Using the software of Gong Competitors can help you decide what needs to go in the manual based on current data trends in your employees, as it can monitor their performance. This means you can easily update the manual regularly, and you’ll know which techniques work and which ones don’t.

If the manual is slim, a digital version will work well, as it can be emailed, downloaded, and printed. However, if the manual is fairly elaborate, creating a physical copy is better as it obviates extensive printouts.

Although the idea of a physical training manual appears redundant as businesses move toward creating a paperless environment, many people prefer to learn methodically, benefiting from tools that help them learn in a highly structured, linear fashion.

One way to keep things more organized is to use a training matrix template that will allow you to track your employees and the status of where they’re at in the training process.

4 Major Benefits of Training

By investing the time and effort necessary to train your employees, you will achieve four major benefits:

#1 Performance: The more knowledgeable and skilled your employees are at work, the more efficiently your business will run. You will have far fewer problems associated with errors in judgment and will be able to solve your business problems faster. A higher level of employee performance will improve all your business processes, enhance customer satisfaction, cut costs, and increase profits.

#2 Business growth: By increasing the career prospects of your employees, you will improve retention. An unstable business environment with a high turnover rate makes it almost impossible for a business to grow.

#3 Compliance: It’s essential to train employees to comply with various labor laws; for instance, employees must be trained to follow workplace safety guidelines.

#4 Onboarding: You need to onboard new hires effectively to avoid chaos and confusion in the workplace.

It’s worth investing in the best training techniques for your unique business and well worth the effort to retain good employees.

So, what are you doing to invest and train your employees?  Share your thoughts and comments below.

Cheers!