Your training program

Employees need to engage in ongoing learning on a regular basis to stay up-to-date with the latest developments. MTD Training Group has great technical skills development training content that can serve as inspiration for your training content. MTD is a training center that uses Uscreen to provide a full range of blended learning solutions on sales and management skills development topics, including videos, podcasts, e-learning and online support solutions.

Technical skills development programs can be included in the onboard training program or can be delivered to any existing employees who can use a little more development. There is always something new to learn. Soft skills such as communication and time management are personal attributes that enable employees to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people in the workplace, including co-workers, management, and customers.

Studied have actually shown that a gap in basic soft skills among company employees affects company success and increases turnover rates. Soft skills trainings are useful for new and existing employees of all levels and are an extremely effective way to build an efficient, respectful and collaborative culture — ultimately affecting the bottom line. Product trainings can either be a part of onboarding for newcomers or can be available for any employees who need refreshers on the products and services the organization offers.

This type of training can also be used to educate staff on newly introduced products, services or features so they are always up to date. Depending on where your company is located and the industry it operates in, certain employee preparedness and training regulations may apply. For instance, public-sector employees are often required to take occupational health and safety trainings and refreshers.

Establishments with liquor licenses need their server employees to be alcohol-safety certified. And a few state laws require both public and private companies to deliver sexual harassment trainings to employees. With online access to these trainings, you can integrate them into your online employee training website to consolidate all required training in one centralized hub. Employees who feel their company invests in them are more engaged and happier than their counterparts.

This level of engagement works two-fold for your company as both an employee retention strategy and a professional development tool. Tuition reimbursement is quickly becoming one of the most popular new programs for employee development. These programs allocate an annual stipend for employees to pursue things like advanced degrees, continued training sessions, conferences, and more.

It also encourages your employees to pursue their own personal development and in turn, they bring these skills back with them to the job. This question really refers to two different aspects of running a training program.

The first is that of who actually controls the program i. The second is that of who conducts the training itself.

The two may be, but need not be, the same person or group. There is actually a third facet to running a program as well: coordination. Someone has to be responsible for scheduling, communication, finding outside presenters if necessary, etc..

The question of who coordinates in this way may or may not be less loaded than the others. A member of the support staff might, in fact, coordinate training as part of his job, or the director might insist that she be the training coordinator.

However your organization does it -- and having the responsibility rotate among staff members is a possible answer -- it's absolutely crucial to have effective coordination, usually invested in a single person.

Without it, a training program will get lost in loose ends and unfinished business. Federal adult literacy funding mandates that each state have, in effect, a staff development resource. This organization provides free staff development for staff members of all Department of Education-funded adult literacy programs. The five regional SABES centers periodically survey administrators and line staff in the programs in their regions, and organize workshops, courses, and study circles in the areas of most interest to practitioners.

SABES also conducts regular trainings for staff members new to adult literacy. While many adult education programs conduct internal training in addition to whatever SABES activities their staff members attend, many others rely totally, or at least partially, on SABES for their staff development and training.

Yet another possibility is joining with other organizations with similar needs to conduct joint trainings. Especially where none of the organizations alone has the staff or financial resources to conduct a full-fledged training program, this can be a great way to provide high-quality staff and professional development. Even if the organizations have different specific purposes, the trainings could cover areas in common.

Trainings on substance abuse, domestic violence, or youth issues, for instance, could be relevant to many community organizations besides those particularly working on those issues. Training in counseling skills or conflict resolution would be useful to almost anyone.

Such joint training can also be made available to the public. This can educate people about the issues and gain support for the organizations in the community. Please see Examples 1 and 2 for some successful joint training ventures. As is stated many times elsewhere in the Community Tool Box, it is extremely important for organizations to live their beliefs. Effective organizations usually have a consistent view of how they treat people, whether those people are members of their own staffs, of the target population, or of the larger community.

Toward this end, an organization should ask itself some important questions before deciding who should control its training. In general, staff members are far more likely to actually use what they get from a training program if they have at least some control over it. It makes sense, for instance, for those actually working in the field to determine what they need to do better, or what they need to know more about in order to do their jobs well. A training program imposed from above becomes simply a chore, another boring meeting to go to.

A model that often works well is one where staff members take turns being responsible for staff development sessions. Staff members collectively determine their training needs, and then divide up the responsibility for providing training in the areas selected. Some staff people may have the expertise -- or want to do the research to develop it -- to conduct trainings themselves.

Others may know or find appropriate outside presenters or materials a video on the topic, for instance. Still others may use their turns to present ideas or methods that they have learned about or used elsewhere, or to discuss issues they care about.

The important thing is that those who are to be trained make the final decisions on what the training will be about. In many ways, deciding who will conduct the training is simpler than deciding who will control it. Possibilities are a program or training director, other staff members, outside presenters including participants and other community members or organizations, or some combination.

There is also the possibility here, perhaps with the exception of initial training, of individual staff members planning and carrying out their own programs.

See the material below on training contracts for one way this can be accomplished. There are four major considerations in developing and running a training program. In the order you need to look at them, they are:. For both new and veteran staff, there is always the tension between what they know they need and what they don't know they need. If you can foster the understanding that exposure to new ideas and techniques is an important part of any staff member's growth, then exposure to such can become an accepted and valued part of your staff training program.

In addition, staff participation in planning and conducting a training program gives staff members ownership of that program, making it far more likely that they will take it seriously and benefit from it. A training program is more than just a series of unrelated workshops.

It should reflect a way of looking at what your organization does, as well as the needs of the staff. Some organizations plan training a year at a time, choosing to focus on one or a small number of topics, and scheduling discussions or presentations months in advance.

Others see a training program as a progression as staff members build their skills and knowledge from the initial training throughout their time in the organization. Still others see a program as covering the areas that staff members need to do their jobs well, which often means responding to immediate concerns We're getting a lot of participants who are using heroin. How do we deal with that? All of these are legitimate ways of looking at a staff training program, and there are others as well.

What's necessary is that your staff training plan end up with a program that has some reason behind its structure. An unrelated series of presentations or activities might have some value, but it will benefit neither the staff nor the organization as much as a training program that forms a coherent whole. Obviously, the decision here will depend on the work of the organization and the expressed needs of staff members, but it will also vary with the philosophy and intent of the organization.

Some organizations may want a training program to address issues that aren't -- or don't seem to be -- directly related to their stated goals. If an organization whose stated goal is job training believes that work readiness is dependent on individual development, it might therefore include information on psychological development in its training program.

Organizations concerned with empowerment might include training on how the organization expects staff members to interact with and treat participants. Less introspective organizations are more likely to focus training only on job skills -- vaccinating children, teaching literacy, understanding federal regulations. In some cases, of course, people in your group have been hired specifically because they already had most of the skills and information they needed.

You don't have to teach an RN how to take blood pressure, for instance. Training should take that into account, and focus on upgrading skills, or on information that's new or specific to the organization. This means you need more rest between your sets: three to five minutes, now, instead of just changing the plates and being ready to go. A little tip on keeping workouts from lasting all day: Work on your conditioning. The better your cardio fitness, believe it or not, the quicker you can recover between sets.

You may never get back to a two-minute rest between heavy squat sets, but you can stay in the three-to-five-minute range instead of being the guy who needs ten minutes.

And when your baseline is zero, literally anything will give you gains. There are a few popular beginner programs out there that are fun and simple because they let you ride this wave. Starting Strength and Stronglifts are two of the most popular. Pick a handful of lifts, do them for a few sets of a few reps, and watch your numbers soar.

They also culminate in you working at the top end of your strength—your five-rep max for five reps—which will leave you feeling beat up and could give you some minor injuries. Key features include more sets, more variety, and less time working with weights that are at your absolute max. For example, after ditching one of those programs that gives you five sets of five reps on squat once or twice a week which led to, you guessed it, stalling numbers and achy knees , I ended up on something where a typical week would give me 6 sets of 6 reps on squat, 6 sets of 8 each on leg press and pause squat, and instructions to do a certain amount of bicep and tricep work, cardio, and core work.

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