Staff Training and Development

Employee development is defined as creating avenues and facilities to give your employees new and advanced skills and knowledge. This is different from staff training because training is mostly done to new employees during orientation while development “takes place” with employees who have worked in an organization for a while. Hence training is the process of giving skills, capabilities and knowledge to new employees to do a specified job. Training is a process that continues as long as on is working so it overlaps with staff development at some point.

Staff training and development is therefore defined as policies, practices and procedures taught to staff to enhance their knowledge, skills and attitude so they will be more effective in their work place. Staff training and development is carried out on Individual level and Organizational level. It can be done in the office space where trainers and trainees take breaks to learn in a specific room probably the conference room or they can be taken out to recreational places like hotels for training. Importance of Staff Training and Development:

• Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of employees
• Address the weaknesses of specific employees
• Train staff about new developments like technological advancements
• Create consistency so all employees stay aware of what is their duties and responsibilities are and what is expected of them.
• Support employees and make them feel valued.

3 Staff Training and Development Tips

It is difficult for employees to fully understand everything they have been trained but it’s even harder to remember it in future. Here are 3 ways to help a company implement an effective development program. 1. Needs analysis

Identify the specific job performance skills needed for more productivity and identify who needs what training. After this you need to get professional trainers who have experience in these specific needs and more.

2. Instructional Design

As a company you need to decide the most effective training methods like:

• Off the job studies where they go out, have special studies, films, role playing and case studies. This is fun and therefore not easily forgettable.
• On the job training is also good because they are trained when still working. This includes internships, job rotation and orientation. This will give them actual skills for their jobs from people who are better at it than them.
• Segmental training – most jobs are hard so training should be done in sections and after they fully master that section they move on to the next.

3. Validation and Implementation

This can be done by having a trainers workshop to equip them with presentation knowledge and skills and also to validate that the program will work and is effective.

• Assess and document their immediate reactions in class and after and also use feedback devices to validate your program.
• Finally, implement it to the actual trainees and keep monitoring the process.

Staff training and development should be a continuous process and not a one off thing because there are always new things coming up and the world of business is really dynamic. There are many other elements to talk about but this is an insight in this regard.

Read more about employee development plan examples, to achive much more better results.