The end of the year is an excellent time to review the organization's training plans and, if necessary, update a new, optimized training plan for next year.
This blog post aims to help organizations to evaluate their training plans and provides tips for creating and improving a training plan.
What makes a good training plan
A training plan defines what kind of training and competence development the organization offers to its employees. It answers questions like: What training does the organization offer? When? How? Why? For whom?
A good training plan
- Clearly defines the training objectives. The objectives align with organizational or individual needs.
- Is flexible and adapts to changing environment and new needs.
- Takes into account the participants' backgrounds and starting levels, incorporates their preferences, and offers tailored content for different target groups.
- Clearly defines concrete steps related to schedules and responsibilities: Who, for example, designs the trainings, who communicates about the trainings, or who instructs the participants, and when should the trainings be available for the participants.
- Includes a plan about how to measure the training's outcomes and impact, such as how feedback is collected from the participants and what metrics are followed.
Training plans in organizations
A good training plan is an essential part of the training offered by the organization. The training plan serves as a strategic tool to competence development and improving the employees' skills and knowledge, and increasing the organization's performance. The training programs offered by the company also play a crucial role in retaining employees and offer a competitive advantage in recruiting new talents. Additionally, with the trainings, the employer can meet their legal obligations, for example when providing mandatory safety training.
In organizations, the training plans can also help in creating more long-term programs that support the employees' career growth and prepare them for new roles.
Creating a training plan
When you start updating your organization's training plan, begin by reviewing the current training programs. What is included in the organization's current training offerings? Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the trainings, for example: Are the trainings up to date? Are the topics relevant?
Additionally, find out what kind of knowledge the organization currently lacks. Consider conducting a competence inventory of your employees using tools like competency matrix. Think about the skills and knowledge that your organization needs in order to stay competitive. Take into account the industry's trends.
Take into consideration your employees' input about the current training plan. What do they think about the existing training options? What would they want to learn? How would they prefer to learn? Conduct surveys to understand their preferences about the topic.
Key elements of a training plan
➡️ Objective: Define the objectives of the training plan. For example, improving the employees' customer service skills or training the personnel to use digital tools.
➡️ Target group: Determine the target groups for the trainings. For example, customer service or sales team.
➡️ Content: Create content that aligns with the training objectives and interests the target audience. Create tailored learning paths for different roles and trainings of different topics. Also, provide training for different skill levels, such as "Basics of customer service" and "Advanced customer service skills". Relevant material that the employees can easily apply in their daily work motivates to continue learning.
➡️ Budget: Define the budget for the trainings. The budget will influence for example how the training can be delivered. The training costs can include for example preparation by the trainers, travel expenses, venue rentals, learning platform fees, and the time spent in the training by both the participants and the trainers.
➡️ Implementation: Plan how the trainings will be delivered: in-person, online, or blended learning. Utilize digital learning platforms. The advantages of using a digital learning environment include for example flexibility and possibility to personalize learning paths for specific roles.
➡️ Responsibilities: Define who is responsible for each aspect of the training, for example content creation, communication about training, or instructing employees on how to use the learning platform.
➡️ Schedule: Set a timeline for when the trainings should be launched and when the participants are expected to complete it.
➡️ Monitoring and evaluation: Define how the training's results will be assessed and what metrics will be used. The metrics could include for example training completion rates, the learning platform's usage statistics, improved job performance, customer satisfaction surveys, or employee feedback surveys. With digital learning platforms, it's easy to conduct surveys for the employees and track learning analytics like course completion rates.
➡️ Strategies for continuous improvement: Plan strategies to continuously improve the training. For example, review feedback surveys of courses regularly, train the trainers and content creators to ensure high-quality training, and document plans for encouraging a culture of continuous learning within the organization.
➡️ Plan updates: Ensure the training plan is up to date by reviewing it regularly and revising when necessary.