Training your employees shouldn\u2019t stop after the first few months of teaching them the ropes of your small business and their specific job responsibilities. Training should be ongoing to fulfill the changing requirements of your company as well the needs of employees to keep learning.<\/p>\n
In \u201cWhy It\u2019s Crucial to Train Your Employees,\u201d <\/a>Ben Horowitz, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreesseen Horowitz, recounts when he was director of product management at Netscape the two primary reasons why employees said they left the company were that they hated their manager (hopefully not a problem at your small business) or that they weren\u2019t learning anything because the company wasn\u2019t investing anything in them.<\/p>\n Considering the challenge in finding and retaining good employees (Plantronics survey<\/a> finds that 44 percent of small business owners say attracting and finding quality labor is the biggest HR pain point), you certainly don\u2019t want to lose any and definitely not when you easily could have retained them by making an investment in their professional growth.<\/p>\n Before you launch a training program for you employees, here are some things to keep in mind to make sure you get the desired results:<\/p>\n Foster a learning environment: <\/strong>Encourage your team to learn. Talk to your team about the evolving needs of your small business. Make it clear that you want to continue to hire from within so that everyone has a chance to advance and that you will provide the necessary training to help them take on new roles and responsibilities.<\/p>\n Establish training goals: <\/strong>Formalize a plan for training\u00a0 each of your team members and include measurable goals. Once the training begins, meet with team members regularly to measure progress, at which point you can make adjustments.<\/p>\n Personalize training: <\/strong>One size does not fill all and that applies to training.\u00a0 <\/strong>Some employees may benefit more from one-on-one training with another one of your other team members than from attending a class. Also everyone learns at a different pace. Take this into consideration as you develop a training plan for each of your employees.<\/p>\n Training doesn\u2019t have to be expensive or involve a lot of time away from the office. Online training courses, for example, enable employees to learn at their own pace right in your office without having to travel across town or another city.<\/p>\n TC Computer, an IT consulting company serving credit unions in Texas and Louisiana, needs to keep its technical team up to date on the latest technology to meet customer needs.\u00a0 Online webinars provide a time-saving and cost effective alternative to sending technicians offsite for training.<\/p>\n To make the experience comfortable and convenient for technicians who might have to spend as much as a half a day watching a training video on their computer and listening with a headset, TC Computer<\/a> purchased Plantronics Voyager Bluetooth wireless headsets<\/a>, which connect to PC and mobile phones. The headsets enable technicians to move around freely \u2014 get up and stretch if they need to \u2014 while the videos are running. They also can conveniently put the training video on pause to go to the break room to get a cup of coffee without having to remove their audio equipment.<\/p>\n Your investment in training will pay big dividends in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Training your employees shouldn\u2019t stop after the first few months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[510],"tags":[569,1066,804,1135,1222,644,1223],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Get the results you want and need<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Keep training costs down<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Other cost effective training options include:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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