Any business that invests in staff development is investing in its own success. By giving continual training to your staff, you are fostering an adaptive, flexible, and change-ready company.

Employees are increasingly expecting interesting and relevant training that meets their needs as employees at your organization as well as up-to-date, informed experts. Providing this training is a critical step in developing a true employee experience management plan.

While there are several training programs available, a few key courses are critical to your workers’ performance at work and can also be very beneficial on a personal level. As a follow-up to our previous blog, 5 Steps to Creating Effective Training Programs, we have compiled a list of the top five training programs.

1. 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.

2. Active Listening Skills Training

Active Listening Skills training is an extremely good workshop to run for staff because it is a fairly straight-forward 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.

3. 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

4. Effective communication

Ineffective communication can often lead to negative work relationships and can affect your company’s bottom line. Whether it’s a face-to-face meeting or an e-mail thread, every employee should have an understanding of the basics of communication. A communication course will help your team develop the essential skills they need to communicate both verbally and in writing, internally and externally. Opening up avenues for employees to then communicate with the organization’s administration is the next natural step, as a continuous listening strategy ensures feedback can flow from the workforce – as employee engagement increases. Combined with an information security course, communication will be become more effective and secure across your organization.

5. Time management

For every organization, time is a valuable but limited resource. It is a key to success, yet many employees lack the skillset required to manage their time effectively. This results in stress, missed deadlines, and poor work quality. Time management training provides techniques and tools that will help your employees stay organized, focused, and be more productive every day.

6. Project management

We now live in a world where most tasks are projects and every team requires at least one project manager. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), “organizations that offer training in project management are more efficient and better equipped for the challenges of the constantly evolving business environment.” Project management is a skill needed at every level of an organization and should be a part of each employee’s career path. Better delivery on vital business goals will increase once this project management training is implemented.

7. Leadership training

Your employees today will become your leaders tomorrow. That’s why it’s important that companies offer leadership training to everyone they hire – not just supervisors and managers. Insights delivered via feedback analytics often indicate strong leadership as being among the most important company aspects valued by employees. By developing your employees’ leadership skills at an early stage, you’ll equip them with the knowledge they need to take on leadership roles with success in the future.

8. Diversity training

Today’s workplace is more diverse than ever. Therefore, organizations need to make sure their teams understand diversity issues. Measuring training efficiency isn’t always about skills – better developing social awareness and consideration is also very important. A diversity training course will help enhance your employees’ knowledge and give them the tools they need to embrace diversity in the workplace.