Employee training and development programs : Why do we train our employees? Well, it depends on who you ask. Some people believe that the purpose of training is to motivate employees or to reward high performance. A few will train just to meet their training quota, and then there are those who train their employees to create a reputation of staff development. Most of the time, though, employees themselves don’t even understand why they’re attending
training.
But even successful training is wasteful if it’s done “for the sake of it”. Because training can be one hefty investment. In fact, U.S. training expenditure exceeded $70 billion in 2016. That’s a lot of spending! And like any spending in business, it should pay off.
So, what’s the ultimate return on training investment? The achievement of strategic business objectives, of course. This means developing training that will equip employees with the knowledge and skills that in turn will contribute to reaching the business’ strategic vision.
6 Steps for Aligning Employee training and development programs With Business Strategy
Aligning Employee training and development programs with business strategy requires little more than six simple steps, followed in a logical order.
- Identify your strategic business objectives: You know the saying. “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”. And sometimes, where you are heading is not the best place for your business. So, start by understanding the strategic business objectives that you’re working toward achieving. These might be related to hard goals, like increased revenue, profit, or productivity, or softer goals like brand reputation, customer experience, or organizational culture. But no matter the objective, make sure that it’s measurable!
- Define the performance results necessary for achieving them: Now, in order to achieve the strategic objectives that you’ve identified in step 1 above, you’ll need to define the performance results that will reflect their success. For example, increased revenue might rely on higher sales, and a reduced number of customer complaints might indicate that customer experience is improving.
- Identify the roles, tasks and competency areas where this performance will be measured: Because you’ve defined the performance results that will lead to your strategic business objectives, you can start to identify the specific roles, tasks, knowledge, and skills that will help the business to perform in the right ways. Like how Sales Consultants might help to achieve increased sales through their first contact calls, and how Support Teams could use their knowledge of the online platform to better assist customers who have queries.
- Evaluate the gaps and set related learning goals: Once you know which roles, tasks, and competencies can help you achieve your performance results, it’s time to evaluate where the skills gaps lie. So, within each role (starting with the most important), assess the level of knowledge, skills, and abilities. And where there are gaps, set the learning objectives that will close them. For example, if there is a gap in communication skills among sales staff, then the associated learning objective might be to “Improve communication skills among Sales Consultants”.
- Communicate these goals (and their relevance) to employees: As much as YOU understand the importance of these learning objectives to the broader business strategy, don’t assume that employees share the same understanding. After all, they haven’t been as involved in the last four steps! So, clearly communicate the importance of achieving these learning objectives, and how their achievement will enable employees to make a meaningful contribution to business strategy. Because of understanding, leads to their investment in the training that comes next!
- Design and develop training for achieving learning objectives: Okay, here comes the fun part! With your direction clearly defined, you can now design and develop training that is clearly aligned with broader strategic business objectives. By designing your training specifically to close the competency gaps identified before, your employees will be working toward their learning objectives. By achieving the learning objectives, they’ll be equipped to perform better in their roles. And that performance will directly contribute to the achievement of business strategy. Tada! It’s all come together.
