How to build and assess your employee training program

Savvy employers don’t view training as an unavoidable cost of doing business. They view it as a strategic investment that’s critical to developing the organization’s intellectual capital. Once you’ve committed to developing a high-performance workforce, it’s important to systematically develop and regularly assess your employee training program.

Best practices

Creating and implementing an organization-wide training program — or even one for a single department — is a complicated endeavor. But there are three best practices to keep in mind:

Costs and benefits

Once the training program is in place, regularly assess whether it’s cost effective. You might be tempted to simply separate program expenses into direct and indirect costs, but these are only once side of the equation. You must also measure its positive impact. Here’s a breakdown of the major elements from both perspectives:

Direct costs. These include items such as trainer fees (if trainers aren’t on your staff), participant materials and program supplies, travel-related costs, and food and beverages.

Indirect costs. Examples include salaries and benefits for trainers (if they’re employees) and trainees, and the purchase and maintenance of durable supplies (such as training room furniture and supporting technology).

Evaluation expenses. These include pre- and post-training tests, combined with tracking on-the-job changes in knowledge, skill and performance. You can directly link these elements to program efficiency and effectiveness measures.

Benefits (or harm). Try to measure the positive impact of the training program. Potential benefits include greater productivity, reduced operational expenses, improved morale, reduced turnover and a stronger bottom line. Of course, you’ve got to recognize both gains and losses. If, for instance, your productivity is suffering after implementation of the program, something is clearly wrong.

A huge difference

You may have to exercise some patience to see dramatic results, but a carefully crafted and regularly improved employee training program can make a huge difference. Please contact us for help turning enhanced intellectual capital into greater profitability.

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