Train your staff and expand the skill-set in your business

When a business trains its staff, not only are employees upskilled, but this also expands the skill-set in the business. This is why staff training is a must. When employees can see you're invested in their future, they feel valued, empowered, and engaged with your vision. That's great news for the productivity of your business.

Investing in your team

If you want great things from your people, you’ve got to give them the very best support. A job is not a static thing. It’s a role that will evolve and change over time, with new skills, new job descriptions, and new responsibilities along the way. To offer your team the best opportunities, make staff training and development a key area on your business leader’s to-do list.

As a starting point:

• Find out what training and education your people want. There’s no point second-guessing what your staff wants to learn. Talk to each staff member and ask them where they feel they need extra skills, or where there’s room for progression in their training. This can be an enlightening process, and helps you get an angle on where these new skills could be used within the business.
• Help them find the relevant courses or in-house training. You may be able to offer some key training in-house, as long as you have people available to do this, who have the skills. There are also plenty of professional bodies, industry institutes, or colleges that will offer courses in the right areas.
• Set clear targets for their education in the business. Once you’ve identified the learning and development that’s needed, make sure this is added to the employee’s development plan for the year. Your employee’s goals could be to complete an online training module, go on a residential course, or take part in mentoring sessions with a senior colleague. The important thing is to agree on the goals, set the right timelines and track each person’s progress against their plan.
• Set a career path and give employees increased responsibility. A key goal for most employees will be to aim for a promotion. With their learning and development goals set, you could also think about giving your employee new responsibilities, testing out their managerial skills, or giving them specific projects to manage and curate. By taking on these challenges, and testing their new skills out in the real world, you’ll help them build confidence and gain valuable hands-on experience.
• Check in with your staff regularly to see how they're doing. Hopefully, you’ll have a review process already set up for your staff, but don’t leave discussions about development purely for these review conversations. Check in with your people regularly and use these informal, relaxed chats to see how each person (and each team) is doing.

Setting up a staff training programme

An investment in employee development is an investment in the future of your business. It’s a sign that you want to support the careers and progression of your people. We can help with training in bookkeeping, business accounting, strategic planning, and many other areas of business management.