Cultivating a capable workforce is a necessity for every company. Without skilled and knowledgeable employees, your business may struggle to keep pace with its competitors. Plus, it can harm your company’s culture.
By embracing certain workforce development best practices, you can increase the odds that your organization and employees will thrive. If you don’t know where to begin, here are a few best practices every company should deploy.
Are you Deploying Training Best Practices?
Upskill Before Hiring Solely for Skills
It’s technically true that you can enhance the capabilities of your workforce by bringing in outside talent. In some cases, this may even seem like the simplest way to fill skill gaps. All you need to do is identify a suitable candidate – which may involve poaching them from a competitor – and bring them onboard.
While this may appear to be a smart move, it isn’t the ideal way to cultivate your perfect workforce. Luring candidates from competitors frequently could harm your reputation. Plus, your current employees may resent that outsiders are consistently coming in, at times reducing the number of advancement opportunities that may be available to them.
On occasion, hiring outside candidates will be a necessity. But, if the only reason you are looking outside is to close a skill gap, focusing on upskilling your current employees is a best practice you should embrace. It allows you to invest in your best and brightest, improving morale and productivity. Plus, it can breed a sense of loyalty, which can help with retention.
Use a Learning Management System
Having a mechanism for tracking and deploying employee training is essential. Without a learning management system (LMS), you may have issues monitoring participation. Similarly, you won’t have access to a central portal for offering training.
With an LMS, you have a system in place that makes managing employee training easy. You can make sure that employees are presented with relevant courses, that their participation is monitored and logged, and that access to learning opportunities is streamlined.
Plus, your employees can receive immediate feedback as they progress through modules, increasing learning effectiveness and motivation. In addition, you have access to customizable analytics, allowing you to understand the ROI of the platform and your employee investments.
Make It Work-Life Balance Friendly
If your training options are cumbersome, many employees will forgo participating. As a result, you need to make your learning modules work-life balance friendly and ensure they aren’t overly disruptive to a typical workday.
For example, make sure your LMS has mobile-friendly access options. This could be an adaptive web-based design or a companion app, either of which can ensure that the information displays properly on every kind of device.
Additionally, focus on micro-learning. By breaking complex topics into small, digestible chunks, knowledge retention goes up. Plus, the modules themselves are shorter, making them easy to squeeze into busy schedules.
Are You Looking for L&D Pros Who Can Help You Implement These Best Practices?
At Clarity Consultants, we have more than a quarter-century of experience in the L&D world. By partnering with us, you gain access to talent-seeking allies who can assist you with locating the L&D experts your company needs to excel. If you need to find L&D professionals who can help you implement workforce development best practices, the team at Clarity Consultants can make the process simple. Contact us to find out more about our service offerings and see how our L&D expertise can benefit you.
