When faced with a vacancy in your workforce, it can be easy to make whichever decision fills the vacancy the quickest. However, with forethought and comprehensive training you can be prepared for any job movement and promote from within. With 93% of organisations concerned about employee retention, employee development not only creates a positive work culture, but ensures a smooth transition with minimal impact upon the rest of your workforce.
So, you’d like to train your future leaders, where do you begin?
Developing your staff into future leaders
Committing to the learning and development of your workforce ensures that when vacancies arise, you aren’t pressured into recruiting to solve the problem quickly. With skill sets for jobs undergoing rapid evolution, provision of training also demonstrates to your staff that you are invested in helping them meet future challenges. With 37% of employees reporting that they lack confidence in their employer’s ability to provide opportunities to develop transferable skills important to their career, this training provision can vastly improve employee engagement.
But how can you provide ongoing training and development without interfering with existing workloads? Before you begin, refine the objectives of your training. To help existing employees progress, staff training needs to improve not just their technical capabilities but also develop their adaptability, critical thinking, and collaborative skills. By ensuring your workforce can think laterally, problem solve and stay up to date with industry developments you’ll create an organisation with flexibility and resilience.
The initial step in creating staff capable of progression is to evaluate the needs of your organisation and your workforce so you can tailor training to address any gaps in knowledge or soft skills. Make sure to address any mandatory requirements and maintain awareness of legal or regulatory changes so you can react promptly. Providing ongoing training, managed through a comprehensive training platform helps to maintain compliance.
In order to upskill your staff, a comprehensive training programme would involve the following:
- eLearning – when compared with in-person learning, e-learning sees vastly more information retained. It also means that different learning styles can be engaged, and training can be revisited at any point. Having the freedom to study when and where it’s convenient increases uptake whilst also being easier to monitor and report on.
- Scenario-based/ hands-on training – A Skillsoft survey found that 33% of office workers prefer to learn by doing, with “real-world” experience guided by an expert. This provides an opportunity for your employees to put the skills they’ve acquired into practice, building confidence in their skills and highlighting areas they can continue to work on. Having the chance to view work-based scenarios during training also allows a review of processes and allows input on improvements that empowers employees.
- Mentoring or Coaching – to maximise the potential gains of in-house promotion, developing a programme that provides mentorship is incredibly useful. It ensures the continuation of company culture whilst also ensuring that employees feel personally connected to their training and ‘bought into’ the idea of career progression. Mentorship gives the chance for employees to ask direct questions of senior professionals and make the most of their experience. It also provides the mentors with insight into the current capabilities of the people under their tutelage so any learning gaps can be identified and filled.
- Management-specific training – the role of a manager requires a distinct set of aptitudes that quite often cannot just be acquired along with role-specific skills. The training may include team-building exercises, idea creation and focus on best-practice.
By continually providing learning to current employees, you can future proof your organisation to overcome the skills gap and create a workforce that’s highly trained and resilient to industry fluctuation. Embedding training and upskilling into working practice means that you will not be forced into hiring to fill an essential role, whilst also ensuring employees feel valued, engaged and can see a clear plan for progression within your organisation.