Page Updated on February 3, 2023
Whether you are offering training as a part of the onboarding process for new employees or looking to provide training for existing staff, offering employee training can provide many benefits.
Staff training can, for example, help your employees (including managers) to:
- Be better motivated (because they feel that they are developing their skillset).
- Fit into the company better because they understand the company’s culture.
- Feel more valued (particularly if you provide workshops such as on anti-bias training and digital wellness).
- Become better team members because they will also use team building activities as part of the training.
- Become better managers (especially through workshops such as on Conflict Management and How to Manage Difficult people workshops).
The benefits of employee and staff training are numerous and the cost of such training tends to be worthwhile.
So what training programs are worth considering and make for great employee training? Let’s take a look below at some ideas.
1. Mindfulness in the Workplace Training
Another topic that there is increasing awareness of in the corporate world is the need to give consideration for our employees’ wellness and well-being.
Looking after employees is not only the right thing ethically and legally, but is one of the very best ways to retain staff.
As we discussed in our recent article on onboarding, by providing wellness training, staff feel that you also care about them as individuals.
Having relaxed and happy employees is also great for productivity!
Three examples of courses you might find appropriate are:
- Introduction to Mindfulness at Work (You can run this as a 1-day workshop for staff)
- Mindfulness at Work for Busy People (1-hour or 2-hour workshop)
- Digital Wellness (1-hour or 2-hour)
2. Unconscious Bias Training
As many workplaces become more diverse in terms of employees, there is an increasing need to provide training based on equality, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace.
One of the most popular courses for employee training these days to tackle diversity in the workplace is ‘Unconscious Bias training‘.
Also sometimes known as ‘No Bias training’, the idea is to raise employees’ awareness of the unintended and unintentional biases that we all have at times.
We get into certain work habits and naturally get used to being around people who think the same as we do, have similar interests and backgrounds.
As a manager, this can be problematic because these intended biases can lead us potentially to treat some employees unfairly in terms of the opportunities we provide them with.
A 2-hour training workshop on Unconscious Bias may not solve all bias in the workplace but it is certainly a powerful tool in raising awareness.
It can aid staff in getting them to be more reflective in their decision making such as when hiring new employees or when making a decision or promotion.
3. Communication Skills
In a working environment, communication skills, as you can imagine, are and will always be essential!
We all communicate by talking, using body language, and through other means and we do so both consciously and unconsciously.
Teaching Communication Skills for employees can be extremely beneficial to your staff and managers because better communication can lead to:
- improved productivity (because you reduce the misunderstandings)
- happier staff (because of reduced conflict)
There are techniques and methods for improving how we communicate and these will normally be included in training course materials aimed at this topic.
4. Delegation Skills Training
If you listen to many high achievers who have created multi-million-pound companies, one of the key tips they give is that you do not have to be brilliant at everything yourself. Indeed, the skill they so often say is key is in the art of delegation.
Knowing how to delegate and get others to do what they are good at is, in other words, the key to success.
With this in mind, it helps us understand why delegation skills get results and improve productivity in the workplace. For managers, in particular, Delegation Skills training will help them to learn:
- How to identify other people’s talents and skills.
- How to delegate tasks the right way.
- Best practice techniques for following up on tasks and for providing support.
5. Active Listening Skills Training
Active Listening Skills training is an extremely good workshop to run for staff because it is a fairly straightforward short course that you can run and that can produce great results.
So much miscommunication and cause of conflict in the workplace between employees results from the simple act of failing to listen properly.
Paying more attention to what one wants to say to the other person, rather than focusing on listening can so easily lead to someone doing a task incorrectly and to completely misunderstand what was said.
In Active Listening training, employees get to try out a number of fun activities and to better understand how listening skills impact on their work.
6. Conflict Management Training
It goes without saying that, from time to time, resolving conflict will inevitably be needed in your company.
The good news is that there are certain techniques and methods for managing and dealing with conflict that does arise. It can be a very good idea to provide this type of training for:
- Managers
- Customer-care employees
- Sales staff
- Team-leaders
- HR (Human Resources) staff
7. Environmental Awareness in the Workplace Training
Whilst providing training to employees in ‘Environmental Awareness in the Workplace’ training might not necessarily be the first workshop you consider providing staff as an HR department, this can be a great short course to provide. Why?
Firstly, if you are providing onboarding for new staff, for example, this type of short course helps to unify staff in understanding the company policy and way of thinking. Likewise, this is a great short course to run for existing employees to also create a company-wide philosophy.
Environmental awareness is also a course that is close to many people’s hearts and being seen to be a company that is working to try and be environmentally aware is a great selling point as an employer and to your customers.
8. Time Management Training
Time is such a precious commodity that providing time management training for employees can be extremely worthwhile if you are interested in improving productivity in the workplace.
How often do we spend all day doing things and yet never truly achieving anything worthwhile during the day? It might, for example, be because we focus all day on minor tasks and never tackle a key task that needs doing.
Likewise, we might spend all day firefighting tasks that come up at work, when we need to see the bigger picture and manage our work time very differently.
There are some useful techniques and strategies for Time Management and these are included in training packages such as those that we offer on this topic.
9. Writing for the Web Training
‘Writing for the Web’ will be fairly specific in terms of which employees you need to train but this is an essential topic for anyone involved with the online marketing of your business.
There are certain techniques for writing effective web copy and this includes, for example, consideration for:
- How writing will look and read on mobile devices
- How your online content will cross geographical boundaries
- The quick scanning and reading style that we almost all do online because of the sheer amount of information and web pages available to use.
Writing for the web is very different in many ways to offline writing. so this is certainly a very valuable course to teach your marketing team.
10. Intercultural Communication Training
As mentioned earlier in reference to Unconscious Bias training, the world has moved more towards a global work environment. By this, I mean that with the Internet and email, for example, we have access to customers, clients and suppliers worldwide.
Furthermore, within the workplace, we work with a greater variety of cultures and nationalities these days. For this reason, providing workshops in ‘Intercultural Communication Training’ can be a great way of helping your team and employees to work efficiently, effectively, and happily together.
In such a workshop, it is worth teaching areas such as:
- Typical stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination that can occur in the workplace.
- The benefits of intercultural communications
- How to deal with and overcome intercultural differences and misunderstandings
Dr Paul Symonds
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