Spending time and money on team training is a must. When your employees see you're invested in their future, they feel valued, empowered, and engaged with your vision. That is excellent news for your team satisfaction scores, team spirit, and overall team productivity.

Investing in the future of your team

If you want great things for and from your people, you’ve got to give them the very best support. A job is not static. It’s a role that will evolve and change over time, with new skills, job descriptions, and responsibilities.

To offer your team the best opportunities, make 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 team wants to learn. Talk to each team 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 that helps you get an angle on where these new skills could be used within the business. Your team will have ideas and abilities you know nothing about until you ask them.
• Help them find the relevant courses or in-house training
  You may be able to offer some fundamental training in-house, as long as you have people available to do this who have the skills. Plenty of professional bodies, industry institutes or colleges will offer courses in the right areas. Some may qualify for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points, a system that helps your employees rack up development points and move towards a professional qualification.
• Set clear targets for their education in the business
  Once you’ve identified the learning and development needed, ensure this is added to the employee’s development plan for the year. Your employee’s goals could be completing an online training module, taking a residential course, or participating in mentoring sessions with a senior colleague. It is important to agree on the goals, set the correct 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 in the real world, you’ll help them build confidence and gain valuable hands-on experience.
• Check-in with your team regularly to see how they're doing
  Hopefully, you’ll have a quarterly or yearly review process already set up for each team member. Don’t leave discussions about development purely for these review conversations. Check-in with your people throughout the working week 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.