What Type of Training and Development Should You Offer Employees?

Training, education, and ongoing development are strong ways to incentivize your employees and maximize retention. But with so many options available, many entrepreneurs and managers can’t decide what types of programs to offer.

There’s no “right” way to do employee training, but finding an appropriate solution that fits both your culture and your budget is necessary to maximize your expected value.

Why Employee Training and Development Matters

First, understand why employee training and development matters.

  • Recruiting influence. Prospective hires who see that you have a training and development program will be more likely to accept your job offer. In time, that will make your team more experienced and more talented, which can lead to higher productivity.
  • Long-term value. An employee with more skills is a more valuable employee. It’s a good way to build the skills and knowledge of your team in-house, and gradually improve your effectiveness as an organization overall. In most cases, you’ll wind up with a positive ROI.
  • Employee morale. Employees with ongoing opportunities to improve themselves tend to be happier with their employers. That means higher productivity and lower employee turnover, maximizing employee value.

So what types of training and education do you have to choose from?

Specific Courses

You could invest in specific courses or seminars to grant your employees new skills. For example, if you work in the restaurant or bar industry, you could bring in CPR manikins and a trained professional to teach all your employees how to give CPR. If you work in marketing, you could bring in a social media expert to train them how to use a new platform.

Courses like these tend to be relatively inexpensive; you’ll lose more in time than you will in money. In the span of a few hours, you can get all your employees up to speed on a new skill or branch of knowledge, and move on. It’s ideal if there are specific things you want your employees to learn, and you don’t want to invest in a full-fledged program.

Cross-Departmental Training

Cross-departmental training may be the simplest form of training to implement, and the least expensive. The idea here is to encourage your employees to learn from each other’s roles and responsibilities; for example, you might have different specialists in your accounting department learn how to do each other’s tasks, or you might have new hires jump from department to department to get a bird’s eye view of how your organization works overall.

This system is good for breaking down silos, and establishing redundancy—that way, if you lose an employee to a departure or leave of absence, another may be able to step in quickly and fill their role.

Sponsored Education and Certification

You could also encourage your employees to get educated or get certification from third parties, offering full or partial reimbursement for whatever they spend to get there. For example, you might sponsor their college education as they get their Master’s degree, or pay for their Google AdWords certification. These methods tend to be more expensive, but they’ll pay off in dividends. It’s far cheaper to take a reliable employee and teach them something new than to hire a new employee who already has those skills.

Soft Skills Development

Don’t forget, you’ll also want to develop your employees’ soft skills, including their ability to think critically, solve problems, and communicate effectively. These skills don’t require any specific coursework, or training from a certified body, so they tend to be cheaper to develop. Depending on your needs and your budget, you could hire a professional to host a workshop to facilitate these skills, or use a creative teambuilding event to let those skills develop independently.

Optional or Mandatory?

Whatever education and development programs you choose to offer, you’ll need to consider whether to make them optional or mandatory. Optional programs have the potential to save you money, offering education only to the employees who want it the most, or have the most to gain from them. Mandatory programs will ensure that the greatest number of people partake in your program, thereby yielding the greatest total value for your organization. Consider offering different types of education and training for each category to get the best of both worlds.

Balancing Cost and Value

If you had unlimited time and money, you’d probably offer as much education to your employees as they desire. But since you don’t, you’ll need to choose the programs and formats that give you the most value for your money. Research the ROI of the education programs you’re considering, and plan your budget with that value in mind. Then, use a combination of employee performance and feedback to evaluate whether your programs are worth it.