There are so many benefits to training employees in the workplace including better motivation, and morale, fewer mistakes, great employee retention, and an improvement in the service that they provide to your customers. However, there is so much training on offer, you may be wondering what programs to offer your workers.
Well, the good news is you can discover 9 of the most useful types of training below. Keep reading to find out more.
1. Product Training.
The first type of training that you should consider for your company is product training. This is about getting everyone up to speed with the products you offer and making sure that they all understand how they work.
The benefits of product training are many and can range across your workforce. For example, by training your customer support team on the products their customers are using they can better offer advice and suggestions, as well as improve their communication and the customers’ experience.
While training your sales team on your product will make them more effective at overcoming objections, and allow them to better customize their pitch to what the customer is looking for.
However, training your marketing team on your product is all about making sure they understand the benefits and features so they can create marketing and advertising materials that really convert.
The great thing about periodic training is that it can usually be done at home, too, so can run at a relatively low cost.
2. Mindfulness Training.
Mindfulness is a real buzzword right now, especially in the well-being arena. Indeed, experts suggest that the benefits that providing mindfulness training to your employees’ offers include better productivity, and better mental health, which can help reduce absences.
Additionally, by offering mindfulness training at work you demonstrate that you care about your employees, and this can help you to keep them over the long term.
When approaching mindfulness training it’s often best to ask an outside agency or organization to come in and deliver it for you. The good news is you will find plenty of providers offering mindfulness at work bases courses that can be run for an hour a two a week. You may even wish to encourage employees to set up a regular joint practice once the course is over.
Note: It’s advisable to make mindfulness in the workplace training voluntary where possible. This is because you will get much better outcomes if the participants have chosen to do it and are onboard with the ideas that it suggests.
3. GDPR training.
General Data Protection Legislation training, GDPR for short, is also crucial for the success of your business. The General Data Protection Legislation came into law in 2018, and concerns how we use, process, and store the personal data of living, identifiable people.
Indeed, this type of training is crucial not only because of the legal ramifications of breaking GDPR but also because your customers will no longer trust you if you have a breach.
Fortunately, GDPR training will maximize your chances of being compliant, and keeping the data of your customers safe. GDPR training includes topics such as risk assessment and security awareness.
4. Communication Skills.
While we all community every day, making sure that your employees are offered some specific training on this subject can be a real boon to your business. This is because we don’t all communicate in the same way, and many of us are unaware of the way that we are communicating via things like our body language.
However, with some training on effective communication, you can make sure that your employees are all on the same page, and that their professional relationships are less strained. Effective communication can even boost productivity, so it really is worth investing in.
5. Delegation Training.
This one is for the supervisor, managers and board. Yes, that is right even people at the board level who are surely competent in all other aspects of their job can have trouble delegating tasks to others.
Indeed, people high up in an organization often get there because they work incredibly hard and also like to stay in close control of everything that surrounds them. Unfortunately, this is a habit that can make giving over responsibility for a task much more challenging. After all, it can seem easier to complete tasks ourselves than to have to experience the worry that someone else will make a mistake.
Of course, not delegating tasks leads to all sorts of issues such as stress, burnout, and also an inefficient use of time. To that end, providing some advice and support for your managers on how to delegate effectively is a very good idea indeed.
6. Diversity Training.
Prejudice and discrimination exist in almost all workspaces, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. They also lead to negative outcomes both for the people that experience them, as well as the company that acts as the context in which they occur. Indeed, discrimination and harassment claims can take up valuable time and money.
Diversity training is so important because it helps to reduce the risk of incidents of prejudice and discrimination occurring. This type of training facilitates this by providing education on diversity including gender, colour, religion, race, sex, nationality, and ability. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, it is usually best if you ask an outside specialist trainer to come in and deliver this training for you. However, you can use data gathered from your own business to inform which topics to focus on.
7. Conflict Management Training.
Whenever you bring a group of people together, eventually there will be conflict. That is just how we are built as humans. Add to that the stress, and power dynamics of the workplace and you can very easily have a very volatile situation arise.
That is where conflict management training comes in. Conflict management training is all about making sure that your employees know how to deal with a challenging situation. This usually includes de- escalation techniques, as well as communication strategies to help your employee guide the conversation to a resolution that is satisfactory for all parties. This is especially helpful when it comes to dealing with customers.
8. Time Management Training.
Many businesses forget that time is just as much of a resource as money or supplies. Sadly, that means that it can easily be wasted, costing your company money and impacting your profits.
However, when you train your employees to use their time wisely, you can expect all sorts of advantages from ensuring that all the most important things get done first, to learning how to prioritize. Indeed, knowing how to prioritize one task above another is a skill that is not innate, but can be taught during this type of training.
9. Onboarding Training.
Lastly, a type of training that you shouldn’t skip is onboarding. Onboarding is all about bringing people into your company in an effective manner, so they get up to full speed as quickly as possible. Thereby saving you time, and ensuring the most productive workflow.
Onboarding is also great in helping with retention because it means new members of the team will feel better integrated and successful at their job from the very beginning. Onboarding tends to be an in-house type of training because it will be so specific to your business.
It should involve an overview of the company’s big picture including values, conduct, and mission, as well as information on the employees specific roles such as goals, deliverables and KPIs. Practical training for computer systems and compliance is also an essential part of the onboarding process.
