No matter how much work you put into streamlining your business, reducing your costs, or expanding suppliers, there are few changes that are as effective as ensuring your employees have access to the best training.
Often, managers and C-level leaders mistakenly believe that skipping training is the better choice for their business’s immediate growth. Finding the time or manpower to not only create a training structure that works but also to implement its effective use can seem impossible.
When your business is already facing tight margins and rapid changes in the industry, focusing on internal education might not seem like a priority at this time.
Is investing essential resources like time and money into training a practical or profitable growth strategy? Yes, and we’re here to tell you why.
Effective training can change the baseline operation of your business in a way that is nearly unimaginable until you see it in action for the first time.
Knowledgeable employees create an atmosphere where growth, structure, and the best practices for your industry will always lead. Additionally, these employees lead through their commitment and motivation. Other employees see their actions and work to replicate that behavior to reach similar results.
When you have a team committed to this type of positive momentum, you’ll start seeing rapid change. Everything from better business relationships to accident prevention improves with proper training, and together that improves your bottom line.
Implementing training doesn’t need to consume all of your resources. Instead, focus on finding the right ways to ensure training is a standard part of your business. This may boost profits across the board.
One of the most straightforward and commonly recognized ways to increase training completion percentages is to offer incentives. Students on the NetPlus Academy, powered by BlueVolt, can earn $BlueBucks by taking and completing supplier courses that offer $BlueBucks. $BlueBucks is a dollar-for-dollar reward program that BlueVolt offers for trainings and referrals. Once a student has earned $BlueBucks, they can use them toward the purchase of any course or redeem them for an e-gift card to a merchant of their choice like Amazon, Best Buy, Omaha Steaks, etc.
To further incentivize, go beyond $BlueBucks and think about what drives the employees you are focused on training:
Surveying employees about training, how they have felt about past attempts at training, and what they would like to receive is a straightforward way to get real-time feedback from your team. While it takes additional time to set up this type of survey, it’s a great way to ensure that any training rewards or systems your business implements will be appreciated.
You want to entice employees to take the training seriously because it can bring them genuine rewards. With simple research, you can find ways to use affordable incentives to make training a worthwhile part of an employee’s workload.
Another aspect that carries over from incentivizing the training is to ensure that you convey the importance of training to your employees.
While C-level leaders and managers may know why training is important to their companies, not all employees will be familiar with the benefits of furthering their studies in your industry. Even if they see how training might benefit the company at the top level, they might not see how it’s going to improve their career. It’s your job to help them see this path.
Approach employees in specific roles with a clear idea of what training they can do, how that will benefit their work, and what that training will do for their overall career growth. Engagement, not just participation, is key. To create true engagement, your employees need to be motivated by what the training can do for them.
Implement training at all levels to show that training is more than just an assignment passed on to workers. This shows that investing time, energy, and focus into training is an investment in long-term careers. The employees who recognize and are motivated by this support to their growth will quickly become your most valued employees.
Finally, setting aside training blocks for your employees to use to complete the necessary courses is essential. It’s been shown time and time again that employees asked to study courses outside of work hours reduces compliance as well as motivation for continuing education.
Training blocks, whether they are weekly or monthly, can work to wrap training into a regular part of the work schedule. From there, you’ll want to ensure that the lessons from the courses are incorporated into day-to-day work.
Ask these questions as you set up the structure:
Without reiterating and demonstrating where exactly the training should be showing up, it will be easy for employees to forget what was taught in each lesson. Setting aside time to check that the lessons are being brought into the workplace will make a huge difference in the ROI seen from your updated training structure.
Regular training as part of your team’s routine can help to ensure you are creating an extensive team of educated workers. Every individual you invest in through training will play a part in improving your overall business practices, helping you to turn bigger profits.
Ready to make the most of training?
The tools you need in order to make implementing training fast, efficient, and effective are available to your team, with centralized training offered as part of your membership with NetPlus Alliance.
With the NetPlus Academy, powered by BlueVolt, you don’t need to spend extensive time searching for courses in your sector. Our course list is packed with over 500 industry-specific courses from 25 NetPlus suppliers, who ensure sales professionals and team members can become experts on the products, tools, and best practices throughout the entire supply chain. There are currently 650 distributor employees utilizing the platform, so what are you waiting for? Join them today by contacting Cynthia Mazraani!