Employee Training and Development: Reasons and Benefits

Sections of this Topic Include

Typical Reasons for Employee Training and Development
Typical Topics of Employee Training
General Benefits from Employee Training and Development
Library’s Blogs About Training and Development

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Employee Training and Development
— Reasons and Benefits

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to Employee Training and Development. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

(As a brief review of terms, training involves an expert working with learners to transfer to them certain areas of knowledge or skills to improve in their current jobs. Development is a broad, ongoing multi-faceted set of activities (training activities among them) to bring someone or an organization up to another threshold of performance, often to perform some job or new role in the future.)

Typical Reasons for Employee Training and Development

Training and development can be initiated for a variety of reasons for an employee or group of employees, e.g.,:

When a performance appraisal indicates performance improvement is needed
To “benchmark” the status of improvement so far in a performance improvement effort
As part of an overall professional development program
As part of succession planning to help an employee be eligible for a planned change in role in the organization
To “pilot”, or test, the operation of a new performance management system
To train about a specific topic (see below)

Typical Topics of Employee Training

Communications: The increasing diversity of today’s workforce brings a wide variety of languages and customs.
Computer skills: Computer skills are becoming a necessity for conducting administrative and office tasks.
Customer service: Increased competition in today’s global marketplace makes it critical that employees understand and meet the needs of customers.
Diversity: Diversity training usually includes explanation about how people have different perspectives and views, and includes techniques to value diversity
Ethics: Today’s society has increasing expectations about corporate social responsibility. Also, today’s diverse workforce brings a wide variety of values and morals to the workplace.
Human relations: The increased stresses of today’s workplace can include misunderstandings and conflict. Training can people to get along in the workplace.
Quality initiatives: Initiatives such as Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, benchmarking, etc., require basic training about quality concepts, guidelines and standards for quality, etc.
Safety: Safety training is critical where working with heavy equipment, hazardous chemicals, repetitive activities, etc., but can also be useful with practical advice for avoiding assaults, etc.
Sexual harassment: Sexual harassment training usually includes careful description of the organization’s policies about sexual harassment, especially about what are inappropriate behaviors.

General Benefits from Employee Training and Development

There are numerous sources of online information about training and development. Several of these sites (they’re listed later on in this library) suggest reasons for supervisors to conduct training among employees. These reasons include:

Increased job satisfaction and morale among employees
Increased employee motivation
Increased efficiencies in processes, resulting in financial gain
Increased capacity to adopt new technologies and methods
Increased innovation in strategies and products
Reduced employee turnover
Enhanced company image, e.g., conducting ethics training (not a good reason for ethics training!)
Risk management, e.g., training about sexual harassment, diversity training
- Trainers: Between the Rock and the Hard Place
- In Business as in Sport: Straight Sets of Training and Professional Development

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to this Topic

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to this topic. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

Go to main Training and Development page.

For the Category of Training and Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.