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 with business goals while planning training strategy. Is your business struggling with this? Let’s see how our recommendation of 6 key steps can help you out!
Align training with business goals: 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% more chance to rank top in the market. But, when they align training with business goals, those key metrics can rise by 40% 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.
Besides, with training developed toward business objectives, employees can know how their personal developments contribute to the whole business achievements. They are likely to see themselves operationalized and more tangible while learning and working. Consequently, your employees are more willing to join your training sessions to improve their performance goals.
So, how can you form the connection between your strategic business and training goals?
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6 key steps to align training with business goals
- Clearly define your strategic business objectives
- Evaluate skill gaps
- Set the related training goals
- Develop the right training programs
- Communicate training purpose to employees
- Measure and repeat
Now, Let’s get each step in detail.
#1 Clearly define your strategic business objectives
To start, you must define your strategic business objectives in the next period. You should clearly understand the goals you are working toward, which may include enhancing revenue, expanding the operation, increasing productivity and regulatory compliance, reducing expenses, etc. This performance varies depending on your specific business.
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 employee 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, observation, 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 a training objective. 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 training to business goals.
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. It means 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 hold much experience in the whole 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.
You can involve the C-Suite in your training strategy to create a more robust learning culture for the company.
#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, the 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 training with business goals.
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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 with business goals so that you can 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 try!
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