Importance Of Training And Development For Your Team

"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay."

These are the words of Henry Ford, and they are true.

For an organization to compete effectively in today's business environment, team members must be receptive to upgrading their industry skills and knowledge. This needs to be a dynamic, ongoing process.

When learning is seen as a one-time event, team members and the business suffer.

To achieve this, training and development leaders must create a workplace culture of learning that encourages team members to develop constantly. This means moving away from the traditional approach of offering a catalogue of courses to pick up on learnings. Instead, knowledge has to be imparted in a meaningful way to ensure it leads to sustained, improved performance.

Training and development and constant interactions reinforce all training and learning modules. As teams work with one another and share thoughts on what they learned, the takeaways and learnings are embedded more profoundly in the personnel.?

In recent years, the American Society for Training and Development found that companies that invest in training have a 24% higher profit margin .

This impact is seen when the training process is continuous, not a one-off.??

When we care enough to invest in team members by providing them with the proper training and development, workplace engagement elevates and the organization gains in more ways than one.

I recently stumbled upon a brilliant book, Workplace Learning by Nigel Paine , which echoes what I've mentioned above. Learning is not finite and is instead something that every team member should constantly be doing throughout their careers. ??

More skills and a broader understanding of business processes and decisions are necessary as people progress their career paths. Their evolution can be supported and enhanced by the support of learning and training. The corporate world being led by digital transformation demands teams to be dynamic and adaptive. What might have been relevant a year ago is not relevant today. Training and development add to the growth of team members and the organization.

Gallup estimated that team member replacement costs could be 150% of the worker's annual salary . Caused by a lack of workplace engagement, turnovers cost the US economy a staggering $30.5 billion annually. This internal economic detriment can be brutal for both small and large organizations.

Let's see why training and development for your team are so necessary:

Ongoing training -

·???????Enables teams to respond to technological changes affecting their job requirements. Training allows team members to overcome skill gaps and get better outcomes as technology and business ecosystems change rapidly.?

·???????Initiates positive personnel retention and trains future leaders. During the development process, teams can comprehensively learn about their company's culture. When knowledge is shared in an organized manner, and team members help each other excel, it creates a culture of sharing, companionship and collaboration.?

·???????Team members feel empowered when they are more effective in bringing about organizational change. When teams are trained regularly, they also understand where they can use their skills to innovate better and function more creatively.?

·???????Facilitates career development and enhances workplace engagement. Regular training and development initiatives can prevent workplace idleness and, in turn, will help businesses establish periodic re-evaluation of their teams, skills and processes. Furthermore, it will influence company culture by instilling an emphasis on planning and can prompt real-time company analysis and planning as it requires employers to review existing talent and evaluate growth and development opportunities internally rather than via recruitment.

·???????Meets their need for continued personal and professional growth. The investment in training that a company makes shows the teams and their members that they are valued. The movement creates a supportive workplace.

Finance functions, trends, technology and process mapping tactics change quickly. When an employer invests in training and development, they are not only improving the personnel’s skills but also forcing themselves to seek out the latest knowledge to remain one step ahead of their competition.

Traditionally, many training and development programs were held asynchronously, also known as on-demand. Members could log in and access training at leisure to accommodate variations in their personal preferences and schedules.

With the emergence of the pandemic and a shift to remote and hybrid work, several training sessions are being conducted synchronously where training takes place in real-time with an instructor, allowing learners to engage with each other as team members become comfortable meeting virtually.

Let's see an example here with Bloom's taxonomy concept .

Concepts toward the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy—facts, figures, and capabilities—may best be presented via an asynchronous class. This information might need to be reviewed multiple times, and the recorded session might evolve into a reference document until memorized.

Topics at the top of the pyramid that require more analysis and interaction lend themselves to synchronous training. These lessons would not be as practical if the exchange were not possible in the first place.

This reiterates the earlier point of why interaction is essential to training and development amongst team members.

If you're still wondering why training is so crucial, do consider these numbers:

·???????An Emerald Works study states that 66% of professionals said that learning and development is becoming a more strategic part of their organization.

·???????According to a LinkedIn Learning Report, 94% of personnel say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.

·???????A Research Gate study results show that participants undergoing leadership training improved their learning capacity by 25% and their performance by 20%.

·???????83% of businesses say it’s important to develop leaders at all levels according to Go Remotely .

Key Takeaways

Team training and development lead to improved organizational practices and business development. In today's ever-changing marketplace, the importance of job training has never been greater. Workforce training is an indispensable way to keep organizations competitive.

Having a high-quality and comprehensive training development program enables us to strengthen the skills of our workforce and build up their knowledge where there is a gap. A training development program will bring the staff to a higher competency standard so that the entire team can share a standard set of knowledge and skills. Such a program will repair any weak links in your organization and cause the workload to be more evenly spread among members.

By providing ongoing workforce training, you will enable one team member to pick up where another left off, keeping them all on the same page without providing constant help and supervision.

The importance of training to an organization should never be underestimated. And ongoing training can be considered the best insurance policy against inevitable changes and unforeseeable needs that will arise in your organization from time to time.

As the business landscape becomes increasingly competitive, improving the team's performance is imperative within evolving markets. The importance of team development and training in the workplace is no longer an additional perk reserved for the C-suite; it's essential for the growth of a business and the workforce that propels it. Companies do not stop changing and growing, nor do teams and members. Supporting them will dramatically add to the success of the business.