3 Steps to Knock In-House Employee Training Out of the Park

Learning and development (L&D) should be one of your main focuses in 2016 to retain talent, and build an innovative, engaged workforce. But in-house training can be a daunting undertaking. While organizations often reach for outside assistance in developing employee training programs, it’s often simpler and more affordable for companies to develop their own, even without access to a dedicated technical team. You know your team best, so save on your training budget and maintain control on the learning processes that help your employees excel.

Focusing on these three steps will help your organization get started with setting up an in-house L&D program:

1. Identify where you need to improve and set goals.

Look into your team’s skill sets and overall performance prior to developing a plan for your L&D strategy. Be sure to examine performance in relation to company goals, team goals, and individual employee goals alike. Your team should be excelling on every level, and there’s always room for improvement.

Allocate your resources wisely, offering the most L&D coverage to areas where your employees need the most work. These customizations enable each employee to tap into a specific mix of content to help her grow in her role. With the right L&D content delivery system, user data will be able to tell you what learning content is being most heavily used, and what can be adjusted or set aside.

2. Know your team’s expertise and use it to your advantage.

When developing L&D content, look to your own internal experts for assistance with fleshing out materials. Invite departmental heads for their input on what the most essential tools and strategies for their employees are, and invite top-performing staff to participate in video tutorials or write how-to content to educate others in the company.

While you may need to outsource some aspects of the process, don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to the team members you already have. The result is well-rounded L&D content that’s designed from your team’s own perspective with their needs in mind.

3. Cater to your employees’ individual learning needs.

No one training solution takes into consideration every individual difference of each employee. However, you can come pretty close by listening to your employees and providing L&D content in a variety of customizable formats.

Survey your employees and implement the content that they find most useful and applicable to attaining their team and individual goals. Some employees perform better when they can learn from a mobile device, and others prefer to access their content at their desk. Research shows that 63 percent of learners had improved outcomes when blended learning is applied.

Once you’ve identified where your team needs to improve, you can begin developing a rough plan for your L&D strategy. Consider topics that need extra coverage and dedicate the bulk of your resources to those areas. You can revisit and reevaluate on a quarterly basis depending on how your team’s performance evolves and changes. By keeping the training process in-house, you can save on your budget while bringing a deeper level of insight to your L&D program.