Training and development isn’t just good for businesses, it can also boost staff retention and job satisfaction rates too.
Although we all understand the benefits of training, catering to all of our employee’s training needs can place a real strain on the annual budget. With prudent financial decision making more important than ever right now, here are a couple of tried and tested training tips to help you get more bang from your training buck.
- Be clear on what training is required
There’s absolutely no point in training a team member in a certain skill or area if they are already competent.
Many departmental training sessions are arranged en-masse because its just easier for those in HR to group everyone together, but if you’re training someone who already has a good knowledge or established skills, you’ll be out of pocket in two ways.
Firstly, you’ll be paying for a space on the course or day session that you could have been better utilised elsewhere and secondly, you’ll be losing a full day of productive work. Add on the fact that your employee will likely get bored and feel disengaged very early on in the training and you have three reasons to take a much closer look at who actually requires what before forging ahead and booking something.
- Create a knowledge-sharing culture
A lot of the skills, knowledge and experience you’ll want to train your staff in are usually already present within your organisation, so instead of shelling out for hefty training courses and qualifications, why not nurture a knowledge-sharing culture where employees join forces to learn new skills from each other?
This can be achieved by temporary job shares and job shadowing which costs very little financially but can provide big benefits for both your staff as they develop their skills and your business as you will ultimately create a cross-skilled workforce.
- Train as a group
One-to-one training can be expensive, so if there is a new piece of technology or a new process that needs to be explained to your staff in greater detail, it’s a good idea to arrange training as a group as this is significantly cheaper (keeping in mind point one of course!)
A significant number of group training sessions can also be carried out in-house, so you’ll stand to make savings on transport, meals and accommodation too.
- Encourage mentoring
The best talent in your team will often be those who want to develop their skills and be the best that they possibly can be. Ambition alone isn’t often and they may often find they need a little guidance when it comes to finding the right path.
In order for you to give your staff the opportunity to develop at work, it’s a good idea to assign them a mentor. That person is there to discuss their future goals, act as a sounding board, share their personal experiences and perhaps suggest training for any skills gaps that need attention to get them to where they want to be.
By having a team of mentors reporting back to you, you will have more time on your hands to run your business without being interrupted by requests for various courses. You’ll also give your team the opportunity to talk one-on-one about their training and development desires.
This will help you reduce the amount of money wasted on training that staff don’t actually need as your mentoring team will be able to give you a far better insight into their actual requirements and how they sit within the overall objectives of your business.
What tactics do you use to make your training budget stretch further? Share them with me on social media!
