Employees are the biggest asset for any company, and good employees have more potential to impact the bottom line than most other business assets. Smart companies realize this, and invest considerable resources into training their new and established employees, using many different methods to make their staff the best that they can be. Employee development starts when an employee is hired and should be an ongoing process.
Employee-Led Curriculum
You can create an internal development team of your best employees to assist in training regardless of the title that they hold. Each of these people should have some specific type of skill that they can train others in. Empower these employees to create a curriculum that will help other employees at all skill levels to improve themselves. Hold these training classes during lunch time, with a lunch-and-learn session, or offer classes on Saturdays so that nobody loses time away from work. Courses in time management or effective business writing are just two examples that can produce good results translating into improved productivity at work.
Start a Company Library
Your employees can learn so much from books that it makes sense to start a company library. Stock a central location in your place of business with books and videos from leading motivational authors and people who can teach a specific skill. You could even offer to host lunch or have dinner once per month or so for people to share what they have been reading and what they have learned from it. Offer to reimburse employees who purchase books for the library, but make it conditional on that employee writing a one-page summary of what she learned from the book and what others can expect from it.
Internal Training Departments
To really commit to training and developing your employees, start an internal training department. This department can be charged with developing employees skills in customer service or computer skills or any other area that upper management feels is important. Internal training departments can be even more important if you have a business that requires technical skills to complete work-related tasks. Set a goal for employees to complete a certain amount of training per year, and hold them accountable for this goal.
Cross Training
As employees begin to specialize, most management knows that it is in the best interest of the company to have employees be flexible and able to perform many different jobs. Smart companies train their employees to do many different jobs, and say that the benefits of this are numerous. Cross training ensures that every employee can help a customer and that every employee also knows sell. Cross training also ensures that employees will not become indispensable, as someone can step into their job at a moment's notice.
