E-learning and LMS blog articles

Implementing a successful employee training strategy requires a great deal of ongoing effort, careful planning and resource allocation. But is it worth it? As one of the UK’s leading e-learning companies, we understand just how integral employee training is to organisational success, having witnessed its impact on our clients who successfully fostered a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce. So why is employee training important and why is it worth it? Join us as we discuss the benefits of employee training and how to achieve the best results.

What is employee training?

Employee training is a process that facilitates knowledge acquisition, teaches employees new skills and improves competencies. The term covers a broad range of methodologies and objectives, but the overarching goal is to support employee development to enable them to perform better in their role.

Examples of employee training

Employee training is a broad term that can refer to a number of training subsets, each designed to address specific objectives and L&D needs. Some common examples include:

• Compliance training
• Induction training
• Soft skills training
• Management training
• Product training
• Sales training
• Customer service training

Why is employee training important?

We understand that busy schedules and limited budgets can present challenges when prioritising employee training, but the benefits make it worth the investment.

Don’t believe us? Take a look at these statistics to understand the value of employee training: 

• Companies with comprehensive employee training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalised training.
• Leadership training boosts learning capacity by 25% and performance by 20%.
• 59% of employees think training directly improves their performance.
• The likelihood of employees not quitting if offered development opportunities is over 90%.
• 92% of workers think workplace training positively impacts their job engagement.
• Employee training is one of the most effective cost mitigators of data breaches. On average, breaches at organisations with employee training cost $230,000 less.

What are the benefits associated with employee training?

In addition to the wider known benefits such as improving the skills and knowledge employees need to perform their roles at the required standard, there are a great deal more. Here are some you may not have considered: 

Employee agility – Training programmes that provide a wide range of upskilling opportunities enable employee agility. With diverse skill sets, employees can easily keep up with the latest industry changes and technological advancements – such as AI. This allows organisations to redeploy employees if needed and remain competitive by quickly adapting to changing industry environments.

Increased productivity and efficiency – Employees who receive regular and effective training opportunities perform tasks more efficiently. As a result, productivity levels increase as employees are less likely to waste time making mistakes.

Higher retention rates – As outlined in the stats above, employees are more likely to stay in a role if offered training and development opportunities.

Long-term cost savings – While implementing employee training programmes will require initial investments, the long-term cost savings outweigh the upfront spend. With a highly trained workforce, employers are better positioned to save money on areas such as employee turnover, non-compliance penalties, succession planning and external hiring, and customer loyalty.

Mitigate non-compliance issues - Compliance training is essential to mitigate non-compliance issues such as legal penalties, financial loss and reputational damages. Equally, compliance training plays a critical role in ensuring the health and safety of employees.

How can you achieve the best employee training results?

As we outlined at the start of this blog, employee training requires careful planning and a strategic approach. When designing an employee training strategy, these are some of the key steps we recommend focusing on: 

• Aligning wider company objectives with all training activities, ensuring these are clearly outlined and can be easily measured and tracked by managers and employees.
• Tailor training to suit the needs of each employee, looking at areas such as previous experience, job role, and existing skills. Find out how personalisation can help you achieve the best results here.
• Diversify your training methods and content. By offering variety in training, you can cater to a broad range of learning styles and training preferences.
• Incorporate motivators such as certificates, badges, leaderboards, and gamified lessons that act as a benchmark for achievement and provide a sense of accomplishment.
• Measure the effectiveness of your training programmes with feedback mechanisms and reports/analytics using the right software.
• Automate training with an LMS - An LMS removes the burden of manually assigning training to each individual and ensures training is done and policies are read and signed on time. This is vital for compliance training as an LMS will automate many tasks, reducing the time and stress that often comes with managing compliance training processes.

There’s a lot to consider when designing an employee training strategy. Our number one suggestion is to utilise the right tools and technology that will allow you to maximise the ROI of your training programmes and enhance their effectiveness.

An e-learning platform such as a learning experience platform (LMS), streamlines the implementation and management of an employee development strategy – making it easy to follow the steps outlined above. If you want to understand how to use an LMS to support employee training and deliver the best results, just look at what our clients are doing with their Moodle and Totara platforms.

Award-winning compliance training 

An essential employee training practice is mandatory compliance training. Arriva’s award-winning compliance training programme has allowed them to deliver a wide range of virtual training and information courses to 24,000 learners across their entire organisation. With knowledge assessments, tracking and monitoring of individual and team progress, automatic grading and certification – Arriva have used their Totara LMS to achieve a compliance training completion rate of 99%.

Mobile and offline training

Due to the nature of their work, The IFRC needed to deliver offline training to staff operating on the ground in disaster areas. With Moodle’s multidevice support, staff can complete training anywhere – an ideal solution for employers looking to boost the adoption of widespread employee training across an entire organisation.

Employee training satisfaction

With elements such as a UX-focused design in their Moodle LMS and robust and secure hosting, 99% of Parkinson’s UK’s learners have rated their training as good or excellent.

Widespread training with multi-tenancy

The GCA is using the multi-tenancy feature in their Totara LMS to segregate data and create multiple dashboards – allowing each ‘tenant’ site to have their private login, and dashboard, customised to their unique brand. With this functionality, you can deliver unique training opportunities to individual branches or teams within your organisation without having to acquire multiple LMSs.

Our clients are achieving excellent results and maximising the potential of their employee training programmes – visit our case studies page to read their stories.

If you’re in need of a powerful e-learning solution that will help you achieve the best employee training results, get in touch with us today to find out what a Hubken solution can do for you.