This post was originally published on lessonly.com.
Whether your company is well-established or brand new, you can’t afford to ignore great training. Ultimately, well-trained employees are the backbone of any organization’s long-term success.
The first and most basic issue leaders face when designing a training program is deciding what training presentation topics employees need. Organizations should create learning plans that address training challenges for the entire business and individual employees. While every company is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all training solution, every company can use these 5 simple methods to discover and create a list of training topics for employees.
1. Use a training plan template
A training plan that covers a variety of training topics in the workplace must be flexible enough for individual employees, full teams, and entire businesses. A training template helps leaders easily navigate through the process of identifying both company training topics and the core functions of each employee. This makes it simple to pinpoint the information and skills that need to be addressed by employees in roles ranging from support to sales.
Using a training plan template is extremely beneficial to discovering topics for training sessions. That’s why we created our free Employee Training Plan Template. This breaks training down across a series of sections that focus on skills, information they need to know, and how they should learn it.
2. Perform a needs assessment
Another quick—yet effective—technique to evaluate different training programs for employees is a training needs assessment. While this process tends to be easiest for small to mid-sized organizations to perform, it provides a glimpse of training needs for a specific group of employees. The activity gathers input from employees who have the same job and perform identical tasks. Each employee provides a set list of the most important—and specific—training needs in order to best execute their responsibilities. Then, the final list is reviewed by team leaders who prioritize and implement training to meet these requests.
Training needs assessments also detect employees’ current level of competence, skill, or knowledge in various areas. Rather than assume that all employees need training—or even the same training—management can make informed decisions about the best way to address knowledge gaps among individual employees and teams. It’s beneficial to perform these assessments periodically to measure changes in employee knowledge and skills, as well as training program effectiveness.
3. Review employee questions
Whether through online research or conversations with peers, people ask questions to find information. This natural habit is also a chance to discover what your employees are searching for. Leaders can classify common questions and problems to create new types of training programs for employees that address each need. This means less time searching for answers and more time helping customers, closing deals, and focusing on work. After all, we believe easy search functionality should be available for every team member, and that employees do their best work when they have on-demand access to answers.
4. Evaluate metrics and KPIs
Team metrics and KPIs are a deep measure of a training program and employee knowledge. Metrics and KPIs are quantifiable measurements that relate to business goals and objectives. When used correctly to track and evaluate the status of a specific process or action, they can highlight gaps in skills and knowledge. When KPIs are lower than expected, oftentimes business goals are not met.
For example, if you have a KPI that tracks a sales team’s opportunity-to-win ratio— and it’s consistently lower than forecast—there is a high probability that reps need additional training to improve their skills. If reps surpass lead acquisition goals but fail to convert those leads to closed-won deals, leaders should provide additional training and coaching to help reps become expert closers.
5. Access training data
Given how much time, planning, and financial resources are invested in a training program, it’s extremely useful to know what employees are successfully learning. Training provides valuable insight and data about employee skills. It’s important—and advantageous—to identify training objectives and then measure and evaluate employees throughout training to uncover needs that aren’t being met by existing training programs.
Using modern learning software makes it very easy to track employee engagement and performance. Leaders are empowered to see how much time employees spend on specific training topics, as well as course completion rates, test scores, and activity feedback. Additionally, leaders can see the areas of training that agents revisit and spend the most time on. Every piece of training data helps leaders determine gaps in training, then apply those insights to create and update training topics for employee development.
More often than not, when effective training takes place, a company decreases its turnover rate and helps employees perform better in their jobs. But, in order to be effective, training programs must deliver knowledge that employees actually need. By using a training template, talking to employees, and evaluating data, leaders can supply employees with the training they need to succeed in their roles—and drive results for the entire organization.
Deliver training that satisfies your employees needs
World-class customers use Lessonly by Seismic to provide their employees with the training topics they need to succeed. Our modern learning software also tracks the impact of learning so leaders can develop training programs that produce vastly superior bottom-line results. Get a demo today.
