Employee training is one large investment of a business, and it should not be just to create the L&D team’s reputation or to motivate employees. In business, every spending should pay off by helping achieve business objectives. That’s why you have to align training strategy with business strategy. Is your business struggling with this? Let’s see how our recommendation of 6 key steps can help you out!
Align Training Strategies with Business Strategies: Why is It a Must?
According to Deloitte’s statistics, businesses that invest in employee skill development programs have increased productivity by 37%, and they have a 32% chance to rank top in the market. But, when they align learning with business strategies, those key metrics can rise by 40% more than others.
Why does it have such a huge impact?
It’s because every achievement of your business is related to your employees, who work for the company, which means that their skills and knowledge lead to high productivity, an increase in sales, and brand reputation improvement. All result in a competitive advantage for your business.
Moreover, when training is developed toward business objectives, employees can understand how their personal development contributes to the organization’s achievements. This understanding makes their learning experiences feel more operationalized and tangible. It’s also important to consider the training video production cost, as high-quality training materials can further enhance employee engagement and effectiveness in their roles.
Consequently, your employees are more willing to join your training sessions to improve their performance goals. Incorporating eLearning gamification examples into your training can enhance engagement and motivation, making the connection between your strategic business and training goals even stronger.
So, how can you form the connection between your strategic business and training goals?
Preparation Checklist to Power your Digital Transformation
Wondering if you miss anything in your preparation to digitize your training? This is just what you need.
6 Key Steps to Align Training with Business Goals
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Clearly Define Your Strategic Business Objectives | Define your business objectives clearly using the SMART framework to align training objectives with company goals. |
| 2. Evaluate Skill Gaps | Assess how well employees are performing and identify any gaps in their knowledge, skills, or abilities. |
| 3. Set the Related Training Goals | Set specific training goals to address the identified skill gaps and align with business needs. |
| 4. Develop the Right Training Programs | Design training programs that fit the learning style, content, and organizational needs of your employees. |
| 5. Communicate Training Purpose to Employees | Clearly communicate the purpose of the training and how it helps achieve business objectives to ensure employee commitment. |
| 6. Measure and Repeat | Evaluate the effectiveness of the training program by measuring employee performance and alignment with business goals. |
Now, Let’s get each step in detail.
#1 Clearly Define Your Strategic Business Objectives
First, to align training objectives with organizational goals, you must define your strategic business objectives for the upcoming period. You should have a clear understanding of the goals you are working toward, which may include enhancing revenue, expanding operations, increasing productivity and regulatory compliance, or reducing expenses. These performance indicators vary depending on your specific business.
As you outline these objectives, remember to define them clearly using the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. This clarity will guide you effectively when planning to create online training modules that directly support your business aims.
Incorporating gamified eLearning examples during this planning stage can also provide innovative ways to achieve these objectives, ensuring that training aligns effectively with your business goals.Keep in mind to define them clearly with SMART, which aims for Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Time-based.
When you know exactly what you need to do, you can identify the specific roles and tasks to achieve the goals. For example, in order to increase sales performance, the Sales Consultants need to find ways to achieve sales through the first contact, or the Support Teams must effectively assist customers who have queries using the platform to ensure their experience.
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#2 Evaluate Skill Gaps
In the next step, find out how well your employees are performing to achieve those goals above. If it’s not well, what are your employees missing?
This requires evaluating the level of knowledge, skills, and abilities within each role, which is a part of a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). You can gather information from surveys, observations, employee interviews, and even from your customer feedback.
You will know what employees need to fill to achieve their desired performance by finding out the gaps.
#3 Set the Related Training Goals
Wherever there is an identified gap, we can set corporate training objectives. Thus, the training objectives will focus on developing employees’ skills and abilities to achieve specific business goals.
For instance, your sales department lacks communication within their team. Then your learning objective for this group is to improve communication skills among Sales Consultants.
#4 Develop the Right Training Programs
Now with a clear direction, you can design your training programs that undoubtedly align with business strategies.
Choose a training modality that is suitable for your content and target audience’s learning style. Also consider factors such as locations, organization, technological accessibility, and time limitation of employees.
Usually, instructor-led training (ILT) and eLearning are the two bases for employee training courses. Other popular modalities include microlearning, video-based learning, virtual classroom, etc.
Besides, you should design the training into a memorable experience so that your employees feel more interested and engaged. For example, think about providing a post-training series of activities that employees can complete on the go. It assists employees to always keep track to achieve their performance and business goals.
It’s also important that you ensure the scope for continual learning. This means that their learning does not stop after a particular training course ends. Your business is continuously growing, and so is your employee training process.
Further guides for developing training programs
#5 Communicate Training Purpose to Employees
As you know about the purposes and objectives of the training, do not assume that employees understand the same thing. They have a lot of experience in all the training activities but have only been involved in these steps.
Thus, it’s critical to communicate to employees about training’s importance and how it can assist in achieving the business goals. They should know that trained skills can help them improve their performance and help the business closer to its goals. Clearly understanding the purpose and objectives of training makes your employees more committed to the programs.
To strengthen this commitment, you can involve the C-Suite in your training strategy, fostering a more robust learning culture within the company. Additionally, discussing how to create online training modules can be part of this communication, ensuring that employees see the direct benefits of their training efforts.
#6 Measure and Repeat
When a training program ends, you need to measure its effectiveness, including the return on training investment. This requires some criteria such as completion rates, assignment results, employee feedback, and most importantly, performance on the job.
You can evaluate an improvement in employee performance and how far your business achieves strategic goals. The result will show you how relative you align learning with business strategy.
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To sum up
Keep in mind that employee training is also an investment and it should pay off later to boost your business growth. Align training strategy with business strategy can help you make every spending worthy. By following our 6-step guide, you will develop effective training programs that help your business achieve further objectives. So give it a try, and don’t hesitate to contact us if you need a customized solution to boost your training with engaging visuals.
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