Ongoing Training Through L&D: Why It Is Worth It
Investing in employees’ Learning and Development (L&D) is a continuous process that shouldn't come to an end when the onboarding stage does. Ongoing training facilitates upskilling, enables employees' personal growth, and reduces turnover rates. Discover why your organization will thrive if you launch an ongoing L&D program.
7 Reasons To Invest In Ongoing Training Through L&D
Continuous talent development is a necessity to keep up with the ever-changing times. Training plans vary depending on the company, industry, work environment, and staff numbers. Yet, contemporary organizations should strive for a well-educated, long-tenured workforce. There are several ways ongoing training can be implemented within a company’s yearly resolution. L&D programs are ideal for making ongoing training accessible to the staff and checking it off the list.
1. Challenge The Competition
Highly-skilled employees set your company apart from its competitors. Well-educated staff can be a deciding factor when prospective clients look up your organization and decide to book a meeting with you to see if your firm is the right fit for them, for instance. Even if a company offers the same products and services as ten other companies, interaction with a high-caliber workforce can factor into a potential client’s decision-making. Showing your clientele that your people are continuously trained, up to the task, and ready to get the job done makes an organization stand out from the crowd.
2. Stay Updated
Advancements and innovations are constant in every sector. Ensure that your employees are up-to-date with how their industry evolves and changes. Ongoing training should cover all possible bases, and that includes market fluctuations, the emergence of new trends and technologies, and how your target customer base responds to each of them. Of course, it is also essential to compartmentalize your L&D strategy to facilitate ongoing training on different subject areas, positions, or categorized by skill objectives. Give your employees a chance to brush up on the material you covered during their onboarding in the Learning Management System while offering supplemental material to work on now that the nerve-wracking orientation part is over.
3. Improve and Maintain Employee Performance
Stagnant, disengaged employees don’t feel productive or motivated anymore. They lack the enthusiasm that they possessed when they first started in the company. Ongoing training lets them know that your company is proactive and cares enough to develop strategies for their workforce's benefit, and advancement can be of vital importance in ensuring loyalty and job satisfaction. Employees that feel satisfied in their job are less prone to turnover and show more confidence when handing in their work.
4. Retain Job-Specific Skills
After completing your onboarding process, it's time to practice every skill that you learned in the workplace, right? That is simply not true. There are skills and processes taught during the onboarding stage that are sometimes only used in special cases. This may cause your new employees to forget some necessary steps or complex processes because they don't have mental refreshers. Ongoing training is an effective way to have essential information on hand so that your staff can review it based on their needs and retain their job-specific skills in the long run. Not to mention, it gives them opportunities to practice their transferable skills as well.
5. Evaluate And Reward Your Talent
Through an ongoing training strategy, companies are able to constantly evaluate and provide feedback on their employees' set of skills. An organization that is aware that its staff is up to par with current industry trends and innovations can easily distinguish its best talent and set benefits plans and further incentives in place. By having feedback at the ready through their L&D platform, employers can decide who is ready for a promotion, who is ready for a raise, and who deserves more chances to spearhead their own projects. Ongoing training is also necessary to fill in gaps when someone is unexpectedly absent or on PTO. You already have well-trained employees ready to take the reins when the need calls for it. Through evaluations, you already know who is the best candidate to fill an empty spot.
6. Improve Your Processes
If companies want their staff to be well-trained, shouldn't they also make improvements on an organizational level? By striving to constantly improve their internal processes and doing more to boost their client services and brand image, companies can set the bar when it comes to good leadership and growth for their staff. Learning and Development strategies should also be implemented on a company level. And if ongoing training is readily available for all employees, that doesn't exclude the upper management. Department heads and directors should also stay ahead of the curve through continuous training in order to be equipped to bring positive change to their organization on a larger scale.
7. Reduce Hiring Costs
The onboarding stage is a lengthy, costly process that requires a lot of planning and resources. Designing and establishing a reliable L&D program and using it to continuously train your workforce reduces hiring costs considerably. If your staff is highly skilled and up-to-date with their industry's latest, you don't have to onboard new hires unless demand calls for it. The "leftover" budget can be used for other initiatives that ensure the well-being of your organization and your talent.
Conclusion
Any ongoing training initiatives should be implemented after careful consideration and research. Every company has different needs to address and different employee needs to consider. For ongoing training to be successful, it requires a personalized L&D program that's frequently updated and maintained. These development initiatives reach their full potential when the learning experience is based on relevant, individual goals that serve a collective purpose. In our employee training software directory, you can search through prospective L&D vendors to find the one that brings your continuous training program to the next level.
