How to Create an Employee Training Plan
Every company needs to make sure that their employees are fully capable of performing their duties and responsibilities in a manner that they are expected to do so. Employers need to do whatever they can to ensure that their employees are more than capable of handling their jobs so that the business runs smoothly. You may also see Employee Training Schedule Templates.
Employee Training Plan Template
This is why companies come up with employee training programs in which they are able to show both old and new employees what they have to do to meet the needs of the business. This article is going to focus on how you are going to develop an employee training plan that will best suit your business. You may also like Training Schedule Templates.
How to create an effective training program or plan
Every employer knows the purpose and value of conducting an effective training plan. When done properly, training can make employees much more productive and allow them to perform at a level that the company expects. Effective training can also raise an employee’s compliance with the rules and regulations of your company. It may even lead to much happier employees. This, in turn, reduces employee turnover and costly onboarding. So, obviously, there are a lot of benefits that an effective training plan can give to any business. Workout Schedule Template.
The problem is that creating an effective training plan is never going to be an easy task. Sometimes, a particular training program may not exactly meet the goals of the company, or maybe the training does not fix the main problem that is happening in the business. If you do not know what it is your company needs and if you do not know what it is that needs to be done in order to make an efficient training program, then do not expect your employees to live up to your expectations. You may also see Training Strategy Templates.
So, if you want to create a training program that your business will definitely be able to benefit from, here are the steps that should help you:
1. Perform a training needs assessment
Think about the needs of your company before you create a training plan template. There have been many instances where managers think that an immediate training program needs to be made because there is a problem with the staff without even properly assessing the situation first. One does not just create a training plan unless one has gathered all of the necessary information that will help understand what the problem is and if the problems should be fixed in order to achieve success in the business or to fix issues that negatively affect employee performance and productivity. So, before anyone decides to rush and create a training program without even knowing the real problem, it is best to step back and assess the situation. That is the point of conducting a training needs assessment.
Assessing the needs of employee training is a four-step process. Those steps are:
- Identify a clear business goal that the training program should support
- Determine all of the tasks that the employees must perform and complete so that the company is able to reach its smart goals
- Determine all of the training activities that will help your employees perform and complete the tasks that they are given
- Determine how your employees are able to learn in the most effective way so that you can come up with a good training plan
2. Develop learning objectives
Before you start creating any employee training plans, you need to be able to figure out a list of learning objectives.
Learning objectives are a list of things that your employees must be able to do once they have been able to complete the training. Basically, it is the whole point of your training program as it is what you want your employees to be able to do once they are done participating in the training. So, whenever you start creating your training plan, you have to make sure that all of its contents are focused on meeting the objectives and nothing else. If you have any tests, activities, case studies, or exercises which your employees will need to take part in during the training, then you have to make sure that they are all used to evaluate how your employees are able to understand the objectives. Also, once the training is complete, any observations that are made about employees who are back on the job should be focused on how they are meeting the objectives of the company. You may also see Training Manual Templates.
To put it in simple terms, the main point of your training is so your employees will meet the objectives. Having an objective gives them a direction they should be heading toward, allowing them to know what needs to be done in order to achieve success within your company. You may also see Training Report Templates.
3. Design the training materials
Coming up with the training materials needed for your training plan is like thinking about what you need before you do the actual training. You have to think about everything that you need in order to make the training as effective as possible. So, when you are designing your training materials, here are the following points that you have to keep in mind: You may also see Employee Development Plan.
- Remember that you have to think about the development of your training materials before you move on to the next step
- Always focus on what it is your employees need to learn and not on what will make things easier for your trainers
- Only create training content that relates directly to the objectives of the training program
- Try to include as many hands-on exercises as possible since people often learn a lot from doing things rather than just hearing about them
- Do whatever you can to have your employees interact with both the trainer and each other so that they will learn more
- Make sure that there are plenty of opportunities for your employees to provide feedback once the training is over
- Break your materials down into smaller “chunks” that will make it easier for your employees to take in and understand. You may also see Training Calendar Templates
- Make sure that all your training materials are arranged in a manner that will allow your employees to help ease your employees in the learning progression.
- Try to go with different approaches on how your employees will learn about what needs to be done to meet the objectives of your company (i.e computer-based, instructor-led, etc.)
- Try to appeal to a variety of your employees’ senses during the training agenda. This would be everything from their sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste (the last one only when it is appropriate and if it meets the duties in their job description). Sight is by far the most important sense that has to be focused on during the learning period, but it definitely helps to have the others included as well.
4. Develop your training materials
Once you have finally finished designing the training materials that you are going to use, the next step is to actually start developing them. Make sure that they are all properly developed as they are what you are going to use when the time comes to actually conduct the training. You can create a variety of training materials with the help of different tools. So, here are some options that should be able to help you out with that.
Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Excel are some of the best tools that will allow you to create training materials for employees. They are also great for creating training outlines and notes for the trainers so that they know the proper procedures and the progression of the training.
- Materials that you will need for the hands-on segments or the role-playing elements of your training plan
- PowerPoint presentations that your employees can easily understand and/or handouts that you will distribute to your employees. Just make sure that your PowerPoint presentation has the content that will provide your employees with what they need, and that they do not just contain slide after slide of bullet points.
- Pie charts, flip-charts, transparencies, or any other computer-generated graphics that you will use as visual materials and aids during the training session
Although you do not have to use every one of these ideas, you just have to use the ones that you think best suit the needs of your training program. You can even decide to use all of them if you mix them up in a way that will get your employees to engage more during the learning process. So, when developing training materials, just remember that there are two things that you have to keep in mind. The first is that these materials have to be ones that will help your employees learn in the most effective way. The second is that the training materials are ones that are used to guarantee employees understand the learning objectives and why it is so important that the employees have to learn about them.
5. Implement the training
This is the point where you actually inform employees that they will be required to attend the training program that you have carefully designed. Make sure that you do not just spring it up out of nowhere and give them as much time as possible before the actual date of the training. This way, your employees are able to finish all the work that they need to get done, and they can complete all of the necessary pre-training preparations. You may also see Training Contract Templates.
You have to do other things like inform the supervisors of the employees that are participating in the training, reserve the areas where you will be holding the training session, buy all of the necessary supplies, work through the scheduling and/or travel logistics, and maybe even plan out what food and drinks you will serve to accommodate all of those who will participate in the training. Make sure that you do all of these things in advance so that your training program will go as smoothly as possible.
If your training includes an on-the-job skills-based component, then you have to ensure that you know exactly what your employees need to do in order to demonstrate competence during the training. You have to define this in advance during the creation of the learning objectives. You also have to make sure that these are not vague and they are clear enough for everyone to understand.
6. Evaluate the training
You have to think about how effective the actual training is once everything is said and done. So, the first thing that you have to do is see if your employees enjoyed the training and if they were actually able to learn anything from it. The best ways for you to do this is by asking them directly about their opinions regarding the training program or you can have them complete employee surveys that you have made. You can decide to have employees provide their names, but it is much better to let them remain anonymous as they are more likely to give you information regarding how they felt about the training program.
Not only do you have to evaluate the training itself, you also have to think about the results of the training once it is all over. You need to have the supervisors of those employees who attended the training monitor them carefully and ask them for reports regarding their observations of these employees. This way, you will be able to understand just how effective your training plan actually was. The results of these evaluations will help you create better training programs in the future, so never take the information for granted. You may also see Training Calendar Template.
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