Employee Training and Development Program

Your people are your business. They are the heart and soul of your company’s brand, the front line facing clients, your image, the company’s face behind your products and services…everything! Therefore, a top priority for your business should always be the development of your employees.

Before you develop an in-house training and development program, you will need to conduct an up-front skills assessment to identify specific metrics that will be employed, in order to define a successful program and to objectively assess employee increase in some pre-defined level of performance before and after the employee completes the program. Some metrics to apply when assessing the success of the training program on employee performance include:

Increase in company standardized test scores
Increases in productivity
Feedback from program attendees’ managers
Improvements in performance as defined in specific skill categories

Some examples of how a Training Program can impact performance across the Functional areas of your business include:

Increase in data entry skills or a reduction in errors for administrative support staff

Increase in calls handled over a given time period, decrease in average per call time or increase in the number of calls successfully handled in a single session for customer care professionals

An increase in the number of records processed by medical billing professionals

The selection requirements used to identify standards for employee participants need to be documented and communicated to your entire organization, to foster an inclusive program. You need to avoid the perception of, or the actual preferential treatment of, certain departments by including all employees.

Two types of skill sets for development include hard and soft skills are ideal for development:

Soft skills: Communications skills, team-building, problem-solving, presentation skills, project management skills, negotiating tactics, etc. These skills cannot be measured quantifiably.

Hard skills: Task-oriented training to accomplishment specific technical requirements, measurable skill sets required from the job.

Training requirements vary by industry and by functional area so you will need to establish a program that adequately addresses the specific needs of a broad range of program participants. Some standards to apply include:

Manufacturing firms require skills in kaizen-style lean manufacturing processes, which demand entirely new skill sets for production line workers to acquire.

Companies in logistics management (ex. freight forwarders and shipping companies) need skills in all of the latest inventory management tracking and product flow management techniques.

Finance professionals need to remain on top of the latest applicable regulations i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, ACH Check 21 rules and regulations, etc.

Prior to each session, the candidates enrolled in the campaign should have their performance review evaluated, with an emphasis on areas identified requiring improvement. The Train Me program committee assigned to implement the program should also revisit each participants’ goals and objectives for the year, and the roles and responsibilities identified in the employees’ job posting in order to determine potential areas for development.