What is training and development in human resources management What is the role of HR in training and development of employees?

Highly engaged employees are usually the most productive, positive, dedicated ones. They’re willing to go above and beyond their job expectations and immerse themselves in achieving company goals. They also display deep loyalty to the companies they work for so long as they’re being provided what they need to be happy at the workplace. 

One of those workplace needs revolves around being challenged and nurtured into the highest version of self. The top talent in your industry is primarily attracted to employee development and training initiatives. They’re insistent about adding value to their respective roles and the company culture by constantly growing personally and professionally.   

Let’s explore your role in facilitating employee development and training and why your involvement in these aspects is valuable. 

Five Ways HR Plays a Role in Employee Training & Development 

A survey found that “only 29% of employees are ‘very satisfied’ with their available career advancement opportunities. 41% marked those opportunities as ‘very important’ when it comes to job satisfaction, engagement, motivation, and employee retention.”

This means that the right opportunities for career growth can keep employees at your company longer, motivate them to perform at a high level, productively engage them, and keep them satisfied with their role. 

Here are five ways you can deepen your influence in employee training and development.

Make sure all training materials are provided

Not having what you need to complete training can take the air right out of the development balloon. One way to positively influence employee training and development is to ensure that everyone receives the training materials they need on time. 

For example, if your company uses virtual or e-learning services for its training or development activities, make sure that your employees are briefed on how to use these services responsibly. Give them information on browser security, privacy measures, and how to use the system. You could also make sure their training schedule is set and that they have a quiet workspace to ensure a productive e-learning training experience. 

Audit your training materials. Make sure they’re the most current and safely discard those that aren’t. You could also make sure any software, technology, or services used for training is up to date and in top condition. Keep track of everyone who is training and check in with them throughout the process to make sure they have everything they need.

Facilitate meetings between company leaders and employees

HR professionals are often labeled as the bridge between leaders and workers. It’s not often that company leaders interact with those on the frontline of their companies and vice versa. But for training and development to be successful, company leaders and employees need to work together. 

You should be scheduling and facilitating regular meetings between company leaders and employees. These meetings could be between managers and workers, CEOs and managers, even shareholders and top-performing employees. It’s highly beneficial for company leaders to hear what employees need in training and development straight from their mouths. 

You may not be asked to lead or attend the meeting, but ensure you’re reaching out to company leaders to connect with employees on the frontlines. Offer to set up these meetings, send out emails regarding the request for them, or take notes on behalf of an attendee. Ensure you’re also responding promptly to company leaders that reach out to you with requests for information.  

Help employees apply for open positions within the company

When an employee expresses interest in moving up in the company, it’s best to work with them immediately. This helps ensure they don’t look elsewhere for a higher position or feel devalued because they didn’t receive any guidance on moving forward with this request. Be intentional about helping employees apply for open jobs within the company. 

Not all employees express their interest in moving up in a company out loud. But for the ones that do, you can work with their managers to see how to best support them in their next steps. This could mean sending them information on what to do if they’re applying for a position internally and how to fill out an application as an existing employee.  

It could also mean offering any resources on bettering their resume by effectively showcasing the hard, soft, and transferable skills learned through their current position. Any classes, resources, or events on how to write a cover letter or brush up on interview skills would be suitable to share as well. 

Keep up with training & development trends

Each business owner, manager, employee, and so on have their unique strategies for successful employee training and development. We’re able to draw from a massive pool of thoughts, methods, techniques, and plans that influence training and development. Because workplace culture is changing so rapidly, it’s essential to keep up with training and development trends. 

For example, one trend that’s surfaced is personalizing the training and development process to each employee. Personalizing the training process is highly dependent on understanding the way each employee learns. Whether they’re self-directed learners who would instead plan, carry out, and evaluate their learning experiences or experiential learners who lean on their own experiences to understand the information at hand, you should construct an individualized training program based on this information.   

Ensure that you’re using all of your platforms to stay engaged with training and development trends. When new concepts, programs, or solutions are introduced that could better your company’s efforts, share them with leadership and push to explore them fully.  

Encourage the use of employee development plans

We’re getting further and further away from the days of training in groups and offering employees “one-size-fits-all” development methods. Each employee has their individual career goals, thoughts on where they feel they can make the best impact, strengths, weaknesses, and potential. Creating a detailed employee development plan can honor the individuality in your workforce. 

An overall professional development plan that details how your company is committed to providing opportunities that meet your employees’ aspirations, long-term strategy, growth goals, and leadership training is essential. Using employee-specific development plans is an excellent strategy to ensure each person is being supported based on their individual needs.  

If employee development plans aren’t being used in your company, encourage leaders to begin implementing them. If they are being used, ensure that managers and employees create them together and follow along with steps laid out. Ensure you also can explain your company’s overall commitment to nurturing employees to new levels in their careers.

The Value of having HR Involved in Employee Training & Development

This world gives us no constants except change. So, you need employees who are passionate about growing professionally and personally if you don’t want to risk falling behind your competitors or getting out of touch with your clients’ needs. HR professionals give employees the support, resources, and guidance necessary for advancement. 

Productivity gets better when employees are challenged and find new ways of excelling in their positions. They’re more engaged with their roles, coworkers, and managers, which influences the overall company culture. When you’re involved in employee training and development, you’re deepening your commitment to company longevity.  

Nurturing and developing top talent is so crucial to company longevity. So, keep on top of training materials, bridge the communication gap between employees and company leaders, and help employees apply for internal advancement opportunities. You’ll also want to keep up with training and development trends and encourage employee development plans to ensure your as involved as you can be. 

About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications & engagement, and rewards & recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.

Learning and development (L&D) can be a great tool for bridging skills gaps, improving workplace culture, and increasing employee engagement and retention rates. What’s more, investing in L&D is being increasingly seen as one of the most reliable ways for businesses to increase their ROI and overall profitability. So much so that, according to Deloitte, the development of new skills has become a top human capital trend.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the basics of L&D. We’ll look at what it is and what your role is as an HR professional. We will also share some examples and best practices to help you create an HR learning and development strategy that sets your teams up for success.

What is L&D?

Learning and development, also known as L&D, is a continuous process of encouraging the professional development of your employees. It involves analyzing skills gaps in your business and designing training programs that empower employees with specific knowledge and skills that drive increased performance. You can do this by offering training courses, online learning, mentorships, and development activities. You can also achieve success by developing the behavior of individuals, sharing knowledge and insights, and cultivating attitudes that help employees perform better.

L&D tends to focus on upskilling or reskilling employees so that they can take on new roles in the organization or better perform their duties. Training can also teach employees new leadership skills that prepare them for potential promotions within the company. This helps organizations acquire, nurture, maximize, and retain talent. It also increases employee satisfaction, enhances the employee experience, and decreases turnover.

What is L&D in HR?

Learning and Development is one of the main responsibilities of any organization’s HR department. Implementing L&D initiatives that take into account development at all levels of the company is usually the responsibility of the HR manager. However, in larger organizations, the development plan for employees may be managed by a designated L&D position or department. Some companies even choose to involve the COO or Operations Manager.

However you choose to coordinate learning and development in your company, HR and L&D need to work in parallel. This is because there is a degree of overlap in both areas. For example, both deal with people management, performance management, succession planning, and change management.

The biggest difference between HR and L&D is that HR professionals deal with a range of responsibilities, including processing payroll, recruitment, and managing employee relations. In contrast, the learning and development department is solely focused on one specific role: the professional growth and skill development of employees. This includes identifying training gaps and developing employee training programs that are aligned with the overall business strategy established by HR.

Creating an HR Learning and Development Strategy

There is no “one size fits all” strategy when it comes to learning and development. What works well for one company, may not be as effective for another. The strategy you implement will depend on the training requirements of your industry and the roles within your company. It will also depend on the size of your business.

For example, in larger companies, L&D is usually highly structured and training is often provided in more formal settings. In contrast, smaller companies with limited budgets are less likely to have a dedicated L&D department. This means that training is often informal and unstructured.

However, regardless of your industry and company size, there are a number of best practices you should take into account when you design and implement your L&D strategy.

Let’s take a look at the most important points to keep in mind.

Analyze Your Training Needs

The first, and arguably most important, step of any employee learning and development initiative is analyzing your training needs. The aim is to identify which skills sets are lacking in your organization and what knowledge will help your employees perform their duties. You need to consider where you are now, and where you want to be as an organization. This will help you develop new business capabilities that help you grow as an organization.

L&D programs need to be relevant, useful and beneficial for both you and your employees.

Design Your Learning & Development Material and Methods

The next stage in promoting learning and development in HRM is deciding how you will provide training. What teaching methods and learning activities will you use? Which materials and resources will you need? Will you use an external training provider or conduct all L&D in-house? And will your courses be trainer-centered or trainee-centered? Effective training usually includes a mix of learning methods.

Embrace Mobile Learning

If you are using an online learning platform, consider offering courses through mobile learning. Mobile access gives employees the opportunity to access learning material at any time, anywhere, strengthening the impact of L&D.

Use Technology to Personalize the Learning Experience

You can also use technology to personalize the learning experience. For example, you can create automated, intuitive, and interactive learning workflows that adapt to employee behavior. You can also conduct regular online surveys to get a clearer understanding of individual needs. You can then use this information to tailor each employee development training opportunity.

Measure the Impact of L&D on Business Performance

You also need to make sure the L&D programs you are offering are having a positive impact on business performance. After all, this is your ultimate goal with learning and development. Create KPIs to measure business excellence and monitor how closely aligned your L&D initiatives are with your business priorities. Is training having an impact on behavior and individual performance? What about employee engagement?

Monitor and Evaluate Learning and Development

You need to make sure you regularly monitor and evaluate your employee training and development program. How effective is your training over time? Are individuals meeting their learning objectives? Are they putting their new skills into practice?

A very useful model for evaluating learning effectiveness is Bloom’s taxonomy. You can use this educational model to classify your employee training objectives and analyze and bridge the gap between learning and application.

Make Learning and Development an Ongoing Process

Finally, you need to make sure you view L&D as a continuous development approach by integrating learning with everyday workflows. Instead of forcing employees to complete training in their own time, encourage them to make it a part of their daily work activities. This will increase participation rates and motivate employees to continue on their path of continuous learning and development.

Learning and Development Examples

If this is your first time designing a learning and development strategy, then you may be wondering where you should start.

Let’s take a look at a few L&D examples from industry leaders to help inspire you.

Amazon

Amazon committed to investing $700 million in retraining 100,000 employees in 2019. The aim was to upskill team members by providing nontechnical workers with access to technical skills training. Amazon offered training programs to workers at all levels of the company. The e-commerce giant was able to address skill gaps with this initiative. It also increased employee motivation by encouraging workers to follow their professional dreams.

Etsy

Etsy also places a lot of value on employee learning and development. The company has founded “Etsy School” where employees can learn about a range of topics focused on both hard and soft skill development. Employees are also encouraged to share their own skills by teaching others and encouraging the career development of their colleagues. This, in turn, helps them further develop their own skills in organization, leadership, and perseverance. It also helps the company nurture a culture of shared skills and collaboration.

Optoro

Reverse logistics company Optoro is another great example of a successful L&D initiative. Optoro encourages exempt employees at all levels of the company to participate in conferences, organizations, and learning programs. Employees and managers work together to identify appropriate development opportunities that help keep staff at the top of their game.

Learning and Development for New Employees

The best time to start working with an employee on their learning and development is the moment they join your company. This helps you reinforce the concept that your company both prioritizes and encourages HR learning and development.

Instead of focusing solely on training a new employee up for the role they are going to be filling, take this opportunity to assess their skill sets and identify which areas of professional development they need to work on.

A good way to keep track of the training needs and development of all your employees, new and existing, is by using a skills matrix. A skills matrix is a grid or framework, often created using Excel, that you can use to map and evaluate the skills of all your employees and keep track of their L&D progress. You can use it to manage, plan, and monitor existing and desired skills for a role, team, department, project, or your entire company. It’s a great method for understanding what skills are missing in each area of your business.

If you don’t already have one, you can download Factorial’s free skills matrix template to keep track of the learning and development progress of your entire team. Just fill in the form and we’ll send the free template directly to your inbox!

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