Developing employee skills
Developing employee skills creates a win–win situation where the company benefits from a more skilled, knowledgeable and capable employee, while the employee gains additional skills or qualifications and has the chance to further their career or possibly increase their earning potential in the longer term.
Skills development and training can also help those who are underperforming do better, and can be used to recognise and encourage talented employees, allowing them to grow within the business. This helps both individual employees and the business achieve full potential. It also generates a feeling of goodwill, and in most cases increases employee confidence and job satisfaction and lifts their overall performance at work.
While developing employee skills can expose you to the risk of paying for training only to have the employee leave, in most cases employers get a fair return on investment before this happens – and you can claim it as a business expense. It’s also worth bearing in mind that driven and successful employees will lose motivation and interest in their job and leave if the job doesn’t provide them with the opportunity to advance and grow.
This article tells you how to identify relevant training areas and develop your employees’ skills to get the benefit of these win–win outcomes.
On this page:
- Set a training budget
- Draw up a training policy
- Discuss career goals and opportunities
- Identify employee strengths and weaknesses
- Agree on training objectives
- Monitor progress and request feedback
Set a training budget
Set aside money for staff training and development in your annual budget in much the same way you’d budget for other necessary and important business expenses. You can claim the training costs as a business expense and you can negotiate more expensive training as part of a salary package with employees.
Draw up a training policy
A training policy doesn’t have to be a fancy document, but it should set out any company guidelines and requirements so that your employees know what training you’ll consider and what requirements they’ll have to meet to benefit from company-sponsored training.
You could, for example, require that:
- Training needs to be job-related for the company to pay for it.
- Employees pay 50% of the course fee if training is useful to the company, but not necessary for their job.
- Employees reimburse costs if they don’t complete or pass the course.
- Employees continue to work for you for a set period after the training to effectively “pay back” your investment in their skills.
Discuss career goals and opportunities
The best way to get the most out of your investment in staff training is to take a collaborative approach. During performance reviews or one-on-one sessions, make a point of discussing short and long-term career goals with each individual employee – and how these fit in with the short and long-term opportunities available within your company.
This will ensure the training you provide is both relevant to your business and to your employee. Training in areas that do not further the short or long-term career goals of your employee will not be embraced as enthusiastically, so it makes sense to plan future development to balance both business needs and employee goals.
Identify employee strengths and weaknesses
One of the best ways to get agreement on the sort of training that would be appropriate is to collaboratively identify the strengths and weaknesses of each employee for both current and future roles they might play.
Discuss the current and possible future roles with your employee. Identify the skills they’d need for the job. Then ask them to identify the skills they have and list their strengths. You might be able to identify other areas where they excel. Use this list of strengths to identify what the employee is good at. Is there a career path they can explore, with relevant training, which builds on these strengths?
Then ask your employee to identify the weaknesses in their skill set. Phrase this carefully to be clear that you’re not looking to criticise, but to find areas where additional training would help them perform current or future roles better.
Agree on training objectives
Use the information you’ve obtained from exploring career goals and opportunities, and from examining strengths and weaknesses, to identify suitable training options for each employee and collaboratively agree on training objectives with each employee.
Write down the objectives, then plan how these will be achieved and the timeframes you both expect them to be achieved by.
Download the Personal Development Plan template to help you record and track all the information you’ll need.
Monitor progress and request feedback
Don’t forget to monitor progress. Review the agreed objectives at least once a year, if not more regularly, to evaluate progress. This allows you to revise the training objectives and plans where necessary.
Make it a habit to ask staff for feedback. This can be as informal or formal as you like, ranging from a quick, informal verbal Q&A; to asking staff to fill in a questionnaire; to requesting a formal presentation on what they learnt if other people in the company would benefit.
You’ll want:
- A quick summary of what was learnt (the take-home benefits).
- Feedback on whether the training met the employee’s expectations.
- Feedback on whether the training met the employee’s expectations.
Warn you employee beforehand that you’ll be asking for feedback. This ensures they pay attention, and helps you to identify courses or training service providers to use, or avoid, in the future.
This information is provided by Business.govt.nz
