What Type of Training

The type of training you roll out has to fit into the day-to-day workload of employees. To facilitate this, consider introducing training in the following order:

• Functional Training. This is training aligned to someone’s particular job or a particular function in the company. It can be as simple as training a new employee on your expectations for them and as complex as a multi-week engineering boot camp to bring new recruits completely up-to-speed on all of the historical architectural nuances of your product. The training courses should be tailored to the specific job. If you attempt the more complex-style course, be sure to enlist the best experts on the team as well as the manager. As an added benefit, this type of effort will do more to build a powerful, positive company culture than 100 culture-building strategic offsite meetings.
• Management Training. This is training on how you would like employees to develop the skills to manage people and achieve goals and objectives. It’s important to provide training for those you have promoted into these positions, in order to give them chance to excel in their new role. There are many management training courses to choose from (go here to see some options). The skills they will learn include:
  • Setting Expectations. Topics such as do you expect them to hold regular 1:1s with their employees? Do you expect them to give performance feedback? Do you expect them to train their people? Do you expect them to agree upon objectives with their team?
  • How to Execute? Once you’ve set expectations, the next set of management courses has already been defined; they are the courses that teach your managers how to do the things you expect (how to write a performance review, how to conduct a 1:1, etc.)
• Skills Training. This is training in topics such as negotiating, interviewing, finance, etc. that will enhance your company’s competency in those areas as well as improving employee morale. Teaching can also become a badge of honor for employees who achieve an elite level of competence.

Ironically, the biggest inhibitor to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company than a training program.