Why employee training is vital to both employee and employer!

Deborah Shulton has over 20 years experience working in Retail Technology but in 2008 decided to take a change in career gaining a Post Graduate Certificate of Education and now specialises in delivering bespoke training packages to buyers, designers and merchandisers. Deborah shares her experience and insights on how to get the best out of training; for both the individual and company:

Training has been shown to improve employee commitment – a recent study* showed that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. However, making sure that the training is effective and that the employee has the time and support to attend is essential. The same study shows that the number one reason employees say that they feel held back from learning is because they do not have the time to learn the skills they need.

Based on my experiences of running Fabric Appreciation courses for more than 10 years I have listed some points to consider as well as some things to avoid if you are organising training sessions for your teams.

Be clear about the learning objective with all parties.

• Ensure that the course participants know what to expect when they sign up to the course and that the trainer is fully briefed in advance with the relevant and specific subject matter required. There’s nothing worse (for either the participant or the trainer) than turning up to a training session expecting to learn about something – only to find that the trainer is going to cover something completely different.

Consider the Audience

• Depending on the subject matter it may be better to run courses for a multi discipline team that work together (e.g. A buying team) – especially if it’s a subject that affects them all. However, in some instances mixing teams (and therefore having different seniority of people at the same course) can be intimidating for more junior team members – in which case it may be better to organise by peer group (e.g. Assistant buyers / Buying Admin assistants etc.).

Plan in sufficient time

• Be clear about the timings to those attending so that they can plan their time away from their day job. If you are holding a course in house, then I usually start around 09:30 so that people can see to any overnight crisis before they attend. It’s also a good idea to plan in a short break after a couple of hours and then beak for a short lunch. This helps the audience to keep their concentration, and also, if need be, make an odd urgent phone call / e mail.

Be aware of different learning styles

• People absorb information in different ways. Some people will learn information best by looking at it or reading it (Visual learners); some by listening to it (Audio learners) and some by actually doing practical exercises (Kinaesthetic learners). In actual fact people will generally absorb information most effectively using a combination of these styles. Therefore, to make any training more effective the trainer should use a number of different techniques to cater for all styles and to keep people engaged. Avoid standing in front of the audience and just talking – they will very soon switch off and won’t remember much of what’s been said. I always include as many samples to touch and feel as possible as well as fabric swatches to analyse in detail and exercises / questions throughout to test people’s understanding.

Confidence and Enthusiasm

• People that are the most confident and passionate about what they are presenting will generally be those that are able to hold their audience’s attention. If you are presenting – don’t be afraid to talk around the subject and illustrate points with real examples – don’t be tempted to just read out the information that is in front of the audience on a power point presentation, they can do that themselves. A good trainer will bring it alive.

Make it relevant

• Encourage as open an environment as you can – allowing the attendees to feel able to ask those questions that they’ve always wanted to ask. This will make the training far more effective and relevant to the audience.

Include a Plenary

• It’s good practice to include a session at the end of training that allows the participants to prove to themselves (and the course leader) that they have learnt something! I will often run a quiz at the end of the session with questions based on the course content that’s usually quite a fun and effective way of finishing the training.

Continued Learning

• Some participants may be keen to learn more – so I will often give them pointers as to where they can get further information from – including letting them know they can contact me with questions they may come up with after the course.

Act on feedback

• After running any course – always seek feedback about from those that have attended – and if there is a common theme consider what changes could be made to improve on the course.

*2018 Workplace Learning Report. LinkedIn learning