The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) "estimates that U.S. organizations spend $109.25 billion on employee learning and development annually, with nearly three quarters ($79.75 billion) spent on the internal learning function, and the remainder ($29.50 billion) spent on external services.
With this investment of hours and dollars in training, organizations need to make certain their investments in training are wise.
Options for Training and Education for Employees
Options for employee training and development are magnifying due to these factors:
* technological innovations,
* employee retention strategies, and
* the need for organizations to constantly develop their employees' ability to keep up with the pace of change.
So, sending an employee off for training at a one-day seminar or a week-long workshop is only one of many options that exist now.
The American Society for Training and Development has traditionally recommended a minimum of 40 hours of training a year for every employee. This is consistent with the emphasis employees place on the opportunity to grow and develop both their skills and career while in your employ. The chance for ongoing development, is one of the top five factors employees want to experience at work. In fact, the inability of an employee to see progress is an often cited reason for leaving an employer.
As a retention strategy for the preferred employees, training and development rates highly. Only their perception of their salary and benefits as competitive, and reporting to a manager they like, rate higher.
Options for Employee Training and Development
When we think about education, training, and development, options exist externally, internally, and online. Choices range from seminars to book clubs to mentoring programs. Here are the existing alternatives to help the employees continue to grow. For recruiting, retention, and managing change and continuous improvement, organizations could adopt all of these practices.
External Education, Training, and Development
* Seminars, workshops, and classes come in every variety imaginable, both in-person and online.
* Take field trips to other companies and organizations.
* Colleges and universities, and occasionally, local adult education, community colleges or technical schools provide classes. Universities are reaching out to adult learners with evening and weekend MBA and business programs.
* Professional association seminars, meetings, and conferences offer training opportunities.
Internal Education, Training, and Development
* Onsite seminars and classes provide training customized to the organization.
* Coaching gives employees the opportunity to share knowledge.
* Mentoring is increasingly important in employee development and training as are formal mentoring programs.
* Form a Book Club at work.
What Organization Can Do to Facilitate Continuous Learning and Regular Training
* Create a learning environment. Communicate the expectation for learning.
* Offer work time support for learning. Make online learning and reading part of every employee's day.
* Provide a professional library.
* Offer college tuition reimbursement.
* Enable flexible schedules so employees can attend classes.
* Pay for professional association memberships and conference attendance annually for employees.
Training is crucial to the ongoing development of the people and their retention and success of an Organization.
This training needs assessment helps find common training programs for a group of employees.
- The facilitator gathers all employees who have the same job in a conference room with a white board or flip charts and markers.
- Ask each employee to write down their ten most important training needs. Emphasize that the employees should write specific needs. Communication or team building are such broad training needs, as an example, that you would need to do a second training needs assessment on each of these topics. How to give feedback to colleagues or how to resolve a conflict with a coworker are more specific training needs.
- Then, ask each person to list their ten training needs. As they list the training needs, the facilitator captures the training needs on the white board or flip chart. Don't write down duplicates but do confirm by questioning that the training need that on the surface appears to be a duplicate, really is an exact duplicate.
- When all training needs have been listed, use a weighted voting process to prioritize the training needs across the group. In a weighted voting process, you use sticky dots or numbers written in magic marker (not as much fun) to vote on and prioritize the list of training needs. Assign a large dot 25 points and smaller dots five points each. Distribute as many dots. Tell needs assessment participants to place their dots on the chart to vote on their priorities.
- List the training needs in order of importance, with the number of points assigned as votes determining priority, as determined by the sticky dot voting process. Make sure you have notes (best taken by someone on their laptop while the process is underway) or the flip chart pages to maintain a record of the training needs assessment session.
- Take time, or schedule another session, to brainstorm the needed outcomes or goals from the first 3-5 training sessions identified in the needs assessment process. This will help as you seek and schedule training to meet the employees' needs. You can schedule more brainstorming later, but I generally find that you need to redo the needs assessment process after the first few training sessions.
- Note the number one or two needs of each employee, that may not have become the priorities for the group. Try to build that training opportunity into the employee's performance development plan
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