Recruitment Advice | Benefits of Staff Training | Hays Canada

Today more than ever, employers are aware of the importance of adaptability, specialist skills and development in their employees. Keeping up with changing industry practices and technological change are essential if employees are to meet the challenges of the future. For employers, this means training is an aspect of staff development they cannot afford to ignore.

Instil the need to learn

Many bosses send their staff on training courses without giving much consideration to the learning content, how it fits into their team's job responsibilities and whether or not their team requests the training in the first place. Booking staff onto external courses is expensive, but it can save you from having to think too much about what your employees actually want or need. And yet, training need not cost the earth. You can find ways to introduce continuous learning in the workplace and discover training talents you didn't realise you had!

Employers like to wax lyrical about the cash lavished on investment in training, and eager students love to learn. Give your employees the opportunity to do a job they enjoy, even better than they thought they could and they will grab it.

So, why is it that, when questioned, more than half of British workers say they don't feel they learn enough from their employers and three out of four managers admit they provide inadequate training to their staff?

A growing number of firms, consultants, commercial companies and training firms are developing programmes tailored to the needs of accountants. Employers can send their staff on external courses, or, bring in independent consultants to provide customised on-site training.

Over-reliance on training departments and external course providers, however, has created an environment where managers forget that staff training starts at home. Organising expensive courses is all very well, but you can easily create a learning culture in your own department. All it takes is a careful review of your current arrangements, a brief training needs analysis, and, working with your team, implementation of short but effective workshops from which both you and your team can learn. What's even better news is that not only will your training be completely bespoke; you'll enjoy it too.

Time, knowledge and energy  

Before you utter the words, 'You must be joking! Do you have any idea of my daily juggling tasks?' Just stop and think for a minute. Consider how your assistant accountant interpreted financial information required to add to the company budget this morning. You watched in pain as he attempted to prepare forecasts and projections. That's another fifteen or thirty minutes gone, with the brushing up you'll have to do later. If only you had the time to show him how to do it thoroughly.

Think about something else now. How does your personnel assistant feel when you take a draft job specfication from her, and, with a few deft strokes of your pen or clicks of a mouse, alter her work from a botched attempt to a comprehensive document? When you don't have the time to explain to her where she went wrong and what you did to correct it? How would that make you feel?

Wait a minute. Didn't you think something similar yesterday about someone from marketing? And the day before, about someone from the purchasing department?

If we, as managers, sat down and wrote all the tasks we think we can accomplish better than the people we pay to do these tasks, we'd have a pretty long list. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. But effective managers don't sit back and laugh about their shortcomings. They fix them.

When, where and how?

As more and more support staff becoming involved in commercial decision-making, having a strong technical team isn't enough. Employees need to understand the business, build and maintain strong client relationships, to make recommendations and, ideally, where relevant, to win new business.

The good news is that there's so much more you can pass onto your staff than what you are probably doing right now. And you can see how much time you lose by not putting time aside to properly coach them in those aspects of their jobs requiring attention.

Managers often think training has to automatically involve a minimum of a half-day, usually more, locked away from the office and immersed in role-play exercises and forgetting about actual work. But while dedicated training days are of tremendous value, there's no reason you can't achieve a certain value from briefer, more focused sessions lasting an hour, or even a half hour.

Many banks and building societies, as well as retail outlets, open a half hour or an hour later one morning a week for 'staff training'. You may wonder about what can feasibly be learned in such a short space of time. But think about when someone in your office approaches you and spends just five minutes at your desk asking you how to solve a problem. How much more could be achieved with a little bit longer, perhaps widening the net and taking in everyone in your team. After all, how many keep quiet about elements of their job they're unsure of. Put them together in a group for twenty or thirty minutes to discuss the problem and who knows, maybe an innovative idea may emerge?

When training is conducted in short, sharp bursts, kept at a fairly informal level, people pay attention. They know they're not about to get bored - and that they'd better listen. Why not consider implementing a weekly workshop for your team and tackle a different aspect of what your department does each week? And remember, the only cost to you is a little bit of thought and time.

Spreading the word

Better still, why should you do all the hard work – delegate the training to your team! Nearly everyone thinks they can perform a certain aspect of their job better than the others. This could be a technical area or something more generalist such as time management. Or, someone might have found a brilliant way past a common problem. Let them put their money where their mouth is. Give your staff the chance to lead short workshops in turns:

• Encourage them to use flipcharts or PowerPoint
• Be ready to rescue them but cut them slack – it's their show, not yours
• Don't force everyone to take part. Standing in front of any group of people – let alone your close colleagues – is not everyone's idea of fun
• Invite them to put forward ideas to you or topics to train on remember, you have 52 slots a year to fill!
• Invest half an hour before each session if required, allowing whoever is in charge of the next session to go over their planned workshop or presentation with you

Putting together a workshop

There are bound to be aspects of your team's responsibilities that require greater attention than an hour's casual kickabout. So think big. Set aside a day dedicated to training. Plan ahead to ensure everyone will be free and that any deadlines due can be met the day before. Organising your training day to start at ten and finish around four allows time for phone calls to be made and received the last thing you want is for your department to be seen to be shirking your responsibilities. Go over the aspects of the job you want to cover. Think about:

• What have been the problem areas?
• What 'lists' can I ask the group to create on the flipchart?
• What opportunities are there for group exercises?
• What opportunities are there for roleplay?
• Who can I ask to come forward with ideas on?
• Who can I ask this/that question to?
• How am I going to liven up the day? How do I break the ice?

It's a good idea to consult your team after you have booked your day. Ask them to complete simple training 'goal sheets', inviting them to list what they want to get out of the session, how they plan to measure their success and so on. As your group is likely to be small, try to ensure everyone has at least one objective addressed during the course.

Make it fun

Even if your staff all know each other and enjoy camaraderie in the office, put them in a training room and there's a danger they'll become silent strangers. Don't allow creeping death to set in. Play games. They'll love it. At the beginning of the day, they're great icebreakers. Before and after breakers (especially after lunch), games add energy to the delegates.

Managers who put effort into training staff get payback. They enjoy the session they've organised and see their staff developing in front of them. And if your staff love the training, you can be sure they'll enthuse about them – and you – to colleagues in other departments. Productivity in the workplace will increase, and in a customer facing environment, satisfaction will prevail. Remember, it's pretty much back to basics for you. You know your ground; you've done their jobs before.

And what better way to identify your future managers? But try to find a way to involve everyone in this training. Publicise good ideas. Those who tend to hide their light under a bush sometimes simply need a leading question for them to take the limelight...