August 27, 2017
Efficiency-driven organisations are always focussed on the capacity of their employees to deliver on the mandates included in their job descriptions. However, there are never guarantees that your employees will always have the capacity to deliver results that are tailored to the needs of your organisation. You must inject considerable effort by training new and experienced staff alike.
The training of new staff members, regardless of their rank or status, is a mandatory requirement. Training helps the incoming staff to familiarise themselves with the work environment, organisational culture and work processes that are specific to your organisation. Just as you would need to acclimatise when you travel to a faraway destination, a new employee needs to be given the chance to learn the underlying principles that drive operations and strategies at the new workplace.
When it comes to your regular employees, ongoing staff training is necessary for equipping them with new skills as dictated by the scope of your skills matrix and the changing business environment. For example, when an employee is promoted or reassigned a different role, training would be helpful for understanding the performance expectations of the new position.
Identifying skill gaps
You should assess skill gaps relative to productivity targets to determine your training needs. Your staff training needs will always vary depending on the needs at hand and the profile of your employee skills matrix. For example, if parliament enacts a new legislation that affects your industry or if you upgrade your proprietary IT software, you will want to know if members of your staff are capable of adjusting to the new way of doing things. This actually sets the basis for determining the training needs in terms of the scope of requisite knowledge, technicality, duration, schedules and curriculum needs.
It is always important to involve your employees when making training decisions. At Ability6, we work closely with employers to design applications that fast track the collaborative identification of training needs.