Purpose of Training in the Workplace

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Key Factors to Nurturing Company’s Growth and Achieving Excellent Job Performance

Understanding the purpose of training not only benefits managers but also the trainee or employee. Even more so, in today’s business environment, it is important for employees to be at the most effective and efficient level they can be.

In recent times, a growing trend has emerged where numerous unforeseen circumstances arise, inevitably impacting the productivity of employees. However, this presents an opportune moment for you, whether as a proactive manager or as a forward-thinking company, to step up and address these challenges head-on. Among the various effective strategies to overcome such difficulties, implementing a comprehensive training program stands out as a particularly favoured approach.

Moreover, training will be a good central point to start creating excellent employee job performance. In this article, we will explore all the things related to the purpose of training, and how it can affect the company’s success.

Female manager researching on her laptop the purpose of training
Training is a great place to start for improving your organisation

 

Let’s first talk about what research shows to start things off. One such is the quantitative social research and evaluation by Kelley Walters and Joel Rodriguez on April 2017 about The Importance of Training and Development in Employee Performance and Evaluation.

The research shows the bottom-line impact of employee performance on general company goals. Also, company leaders or managers should use a systematic approach to increase employees’ competencies that can directly help them to perform a particular job.

Furthermore, through this research, they found a significant correlation between company investment in employees’ development programs and growth in company gross profit. The whole journal is talking about how important it is for a company to realise the benefit of the purpose of training.

It is a company’s responsibility to improve employees’ performance by developing relevant and effective training programs.

What is the Purpose of Training and Development?

The training program is one of the important elements used by a company to help both individuals and organisations to achieve company goals. Using training as a tool can increase employees’ overall skills and job performance.

In the past recent decades, training has emerged as a crucial strategy to improve employee talent and create highly-skilled resources. So, how about taking a deep look at some basic benefits that can help you understand how important the purpose of training is for the company?

1. Increase Productivity

Productivity is a way to measure job efficiency. It is an important topic because productivity means getting high results with less time and effort. But how can employees do that? Not all employees are aware of how important it is to be productive or even know if they are supposed to be. So yes, the answer is through training. The first purpose of training that we will discuss here is to increase productivity.

Let’s take labour economics and human capital research by Nishtha Langer on March 2013 about Human Capital Investments and Employee Performance: An Analysis of IT Services Industry. She examined the correlation between human capital investments and employee training programs.

Through the data set from a dynamic panel model, she found a significant positive impact of training on employee performance. Furthermore, it showed an average of 2.14% increase in overall employee job performance.

Even though from her analysis she found there was also a not-so-positive increase in specific training. However, she justified that human capital investment is an important component to fuel either future growth of the company goals specifically, or the national economy globally.

Graph showing overall performance increases with training
Overall, there was an increase in performance

 

Strategies and tips to increase productivity through training programs

With today’s explosive improvement and innovations, we have several tips to improve companies’ productivity. For companies to achieve their goals, managers need to create a suitable program that helps employees to reach their best abilities.

If you want your company to become more productive, then better to consider some of these productivity training strategies below:

  • Focus to build high-performance teams: Get access to employees’ strengths and use them. While on the contrary, get access to employees’ weaknesses and minimise the effect.
  • Prioritise and delegate tasks: You can do this by upgrading proficiency in the current job or task. Specifically, identify if the employee matches the job requirement or not, and do suitable action.
  • Avoid multitasking and improve employees’ core skills: Focus on learning new systems, procedures, and technologies.
  • Stop chasing the illusion of perfection: Take control of good job results based on daily job performance.
  • Allowing employees to be proactive: Get as much information from the employee side. Be aware of the fact that sometimes they know better than what the company does.

All in all, to optimise company productivity levels, you as a manager need to get rid of all the things that can steal your important time and start to focus only on important matters. Learn to work smarter instead of harder by starting to implement the points above. And then you will notice how quickly your company productivity will increase.

I’m sure you would agree with me here. That there is no better feeling than a sense of awareness at the end of the day knowing that you did everything you need to get done. This is where the purpose of training gets well served.

For example:

– Product standard training for a franchise business. This training will help to ensure the quality of product and service standards. The purpose of training for this category is to make sure the customers get the same standardisation for all franchise brands wherever the place is. The main goal of this training program is to increase productivity by ensuring the safety, quality, and reliability of company products and services.

2. Improve the Quality of Work

Work quality refers to a job result that can meet or exceed company expectations. It is an important part of job performance and satisfaction. In a business environment, companies have high expectations of their employees. However, the strategy that can improve the overall quality of work might be simpler than what you as a manager thought or anticipate. And we will go to discuss it here as the second purpose of training. So what is it? It is to create a good training program to improve the general company’s expectations or quality of work.

This is based on the IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM) by Shefali Srivastava and Rooma Kanpur on March 2014 about A Study On Quality Of Work Life: Key Elements & Its Implications. They analysed strategies that can be implemented by company management to improve work quality.

They found that employee training, communications, attitude survey of feedback, and similar assistance can support top management levels to motivate employees to give strong support to the company. Overall, these kinds of programs will increase employee self-performance and the company’s general quality of work.

table showing the benefits of training to organisation and individual
Training benefits both the company and the individual

 

Strategies and tips to improve the quality of work through training programs

According to research, a training program is effective and can build strong workplace relationships between the company and employees. This is even more so when more and more job is completed based on specific guidance.

This is an important element for the purpose of training because specific guidance will make sure every job is based on the company’s needs and directions. To make a good training program and achieve the purpose of training, we believe there are several elements that can be used, which are revealed below:

  • Has a clear agenda: Every training must have a specific goal and directive instruction. The management needs to set up measurable objectives for the training program.
  • Relevant skills for the job role: Decide which types of employee positions or levels and avoid making a generalisation.
  • Up-to-date: Frequently update the training materials or curriculums so it fits with what the employees need.
  • Engaging and easy to understand: Make sure the training can keep employees’ attention. This is the best way to make employees able to learn whatever you teach them at the moment.
  • Exclusive and used various media and methods: This entails using all training styles and tools so the employee can enjoy their learning process while following the training program.
For example:

– New software training. This training program is a good step to improve the quality of work. Software is used for fast and accurate work. However, not all employees know how to use the new coming software. That’s why, a company needs to provide special training. Training that can help employees to use it in the best way it should be. Once they do it, then the quality of work will also increase.

In this way, the company can fulfill the purpose of training, because what they enjoy will be easy to absorb. The company must be aware that when they succeed to provide good training, it will make the employees get a sense of accomplishment.

And as a general fact, it’s a key to fundamental human behaviour. That when they enjoy things that they are good at, it will improve the quality of the things they do. Nobody wants to do something that they don’t want or they’re not good at, because it makes them feel bad about themselves. But with training, all of these scary feelings will decrease because of the confidence of having good knowledge.


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3. Reduce Company Costs in General Aspects

A company must be clever enough to identify inefficiencies in a workplace environment. All managers probably have experience and can relate to horror stories at the end of the month. For example, when they need to attend a P&L meeting and found out that their department cost was higher than what it should be.

But how can you anticipate it? How can you make sure all department cost is within the monthly budget? This is where the purpose of training will serve the function. A good training program does not only increase productivity or improve work quality. But it also in general terms can decrease the company’s overall cost. Training will make a company as efficient as possible from the bottom line to the top management level.

For example:

– Electricity cost maintenance. Electricity is an important part of company cost factors. And it takes a big part in monthly costs, because of day-to-day operational costs. However, there are always things that the company can do to decrease the electricity cost. Also, the company can share the appropriate information with the employees so they can participate in it. Let’s say, we can test this from a small thing that the employees can do, such as turn the lights off when they leave a room or at the end of the working day.

Furthermore, through training, the company can share information about strategies to reduce the company’s costs in general aspects. More importantly, a strategy that can make sure every person inside the company gives a positive contribution.

Training will be able to make employees aware. The employees will get suitable information about the cost reduction program. And also, the information about how to do the necessary actions. With this knowledge, the employees can identify unnecessary costs and the specific action to handle them.

Effective training can make employees do less costly mistakes. This is especially when company budgets are very tight. Professional training programs will help to create new and better habits. It also can increase employee mindsets, which will enhance their job performance.

All in all, by understanding the purpose of training, the company can stay on top of learning outcomes. It will lead to reducing the overall company cost. Or in other words, keeping it at the normal expense level.

4. Avoid Some Unnecessary Accidents in the Workplace Area

Accidents are always unplanned. And it seems, there’s no way to reduce it to zero occurrence. However, companies always have a choice to do certain actions. In other words, a plan or good preparation will help. Because the right action can reduce the number of accidents, and the types of common accidents that potentially happen in the future.

Once again, this kind of information or strategy will be well distributed through a good training program. This fourth purpose of training will help to create a safe working environment.

Here’s another interesting source, Accident Research: Theories and Methods by Elisabeth Lagerlöf. This journal investigated accidents and called it the twentieth-century disease. The author tried to describe three models for accident research and shows how the reporting of near accidents can improve industrial safety. From the analysis, we can know that the communication and training program can help to reduce the number of accidents.

table showing the injury rate and severity rate of accidents in the workplace
No matter what industry, accidents are a concern

 

The importance of collecting information about unsafe conditions and near missed conditions of accidents also brings up by ILO or International Labour Office, in their research about the Improvement of national reporting, data collection, and analysis of occupational accidents and diseases. Now, the company can review how important information or sharing knowledge is within a company. In fact, it almost touches every aspect of the company’s lives. And it can be well distributed and serve the purpose of training.

For example:

– General safety standard training for engineering staff. It’s critical and crucial. Safety training will actually save lives and reduces injury in a workplace area. Effective training will share information about how to prevent accidents, injuries, and illnesses. It also will make sure that employees have the skills to respond appropriately to any engineering emergency situation.

5. Develop Employee Personal Growth

A successful company will always have a good understanding of many aspects. This includes knowledge of why it’s important to educate the existing employees rather than trying to get new employees.

What we are trying to say here? The employee development program isn’t just beneficial for the employee itself. But it also gives a positive impact on the company. The reason is that the employees who feel respected will give their best for the work. And they also will offer a wider value through their job performance.

So, this last purpose of training is not the least important. But it is as important as the other elements above. Employee personal growth also needs to get attention from the company management.

For example:

– Foreign language training for hotel employees. This training program will help the employees to break down any barriers to communication and provide a good service for foreign guests. This skill is important in a modern hotel business environment. It can help the business to interact more effectively either with clients or guests.

What Are the 3 Benefits of Training?

Training will help the company to gain a good investment. This is because it always led to an increase in sales percentage. Or in general, for the company’s financial performance. With training, employees will feel valued. And of course, with a good opportunity, employees will feel comfortable. It is because they have a big chance to improve their knowledge and skills. This improvement will impact their performance in the workplace area. Below are the top 3 important benefits of employee training.

Group of happy productive employees with three stars above their heads
3 important benefits!

 

1. Empowers Employees and Develops Future Leaders

It is important for employees to feel like they are contributing. Employees need to know that they are valued. And the company can use training to let employees know about these things.

Furthermore, training can communicate the company’s vision. In so doing, every person in the company can take and give a good contribution. Training can show an appreciation for well-done work. And also, training can give guidance to get more efficient job performance. In the next step, training can help the company to develop a good leadership program. This program will prepare the key decision-makers.

2. Boosts Workplace Engagement and Builds Relationships

A successful business will support its employees with many benefits. These benefits will improve employee engagement. And one of the programs that can be offered by a company is training.

Training will boost employees to feel motivated. A happy employee will always feel welcome. They are happy to know when there will be training. This is where the purpose of training gets well served.

Many factors can influence employee engagement. It can be the culture inside the company, the kind of culture which either can make employees stay or do otherwise. However, it fluctuated over time. That’s why it is crucial to make sure that training stays up to date with what the employees need.

3. Reduce Employee Turnover

Every company wants the best employees to stay with the company. They want this type of employee to continue giving a good contribution. They want them to bring a good impact to the business as usual in a long-term period. But, how can a company guarantee it?

One of the best ways is by keeping the employees engaged and satisfied. The general purpose of training will be achieved once the training includes the activities in these two ways. It means the company can get to know the employee’s honest perceptions toward them.

An excellent training program will strengthen the organisation’s core function. It will bring all people within the organisation towards a high standard of competency. And the entire team can share the same goal. So, it is better to invest in training programs.

All in all, a well-trained employee will give more benefits to the company. Their work will be more efficient and consistent. They will make fewer mistakes and have a high morale level. Of course, it will satisfy the business. Why? Because it brings a good impact on overall company productivity and reputation.

Bonus read: Our comprehensive report on the training industry.

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