Training employees can be quite expensive, particularly in today’s generally costly world. However, companies need a skilled workforce, and, therefore, not training them is not an option. Luckily, some good planning, a proper budget, and the right resources are all you need to create an effective training program.

Costs Associated With Employee Training

Employee training is essential to build a skilled workforce that brings results. Moreover, in-demand skills (like leadership, compliance and sales skills) change over time, as do industry trends and regulations. This is why you cannot give up on employee training, even if the costs seem too much.

Usually, the costs associated with employee training fall into three categories:

1. Costs For Learning Materials: Learning materials come in the form of guides, manuals, and training courses. These could either be developed by your organization or bought from outside sources.
2. Costs For Onboarding Tech: Onboarding tech would include smartboards for in-person training or video conferencing software for remote training. Another option is a third-party platform to host their learning courses. However, building a learning management software or LMS from scratch takes effort and skill, and so, such software is often bought.
3. Cost Of Time Spent On Training: Time is money, and time spent on training is time spent away from projects and operations that make money. If you expect to do classroom training, then you need to add traveling costs, hotels, and food in addition. So, striking a balance between the two is a good idea. 

How To Reduce Training Costs and still get the expected results?

So, now that you know some of the costs associated with employee training, here are some ways to reduce those costs:

1. Opt For Online And virtual live Training: Traditionally, employee training was an in-house affair. However, in today’s world of the internet of things, traditional offline training alone will probably not be enough and is hard to justify. Moreover, online training is cheaper than offline training. However, the best option that usually offers the best results is to blend online and virtual live training, so that your employees get the best of both worlds.
2. Choose The Right Training Platform: Training platforms need to be user-friendly for both learners and course creators. They would ideally use popular app designs and features so that it’s easier to navigate for course creators, and learning is fun and easy for the trainees. Such tools make for engaged learners and are quite cost-effective, especially since they can be used in a variety of ways and upgraded easily. From some vendors, you will get both the course training and the LMS platform included in one price making it easy and it gives you a fast start. In addition, you can normally grow with the included LMS system into your onboarding programs, partner network, customer training and so on.
3. Leverage virtual live coach training: Introducing Leadership, Team, or Sales training only online is a good starting point. It will give your employees access to training so that their skills will be enhanced. However, studies show that combining online training (available 24/7) with regular leadership or sales coaching tripled or quadrupled the learning results. In addition, a coach will be able to adapt the training to your specific needs so that you get maximum benefit.
4. Make Onboarding Scalable and Repeatable: Onboarding is time-consuming, but repeatable, which means, it doesn’t change for most new employees that join. Thus, the same content can be used for the process, and all you have to do is build a program based on existing best practice available training, and add company-specific recordings with regards to products and company values and vision. This will also make the onboarding process uniform and will save you both time and money.
5. Assess Learning Needs First: It is always a good idea to assess your employees before deciding on training. This will give you a good idea of what training material you need and will save money by ensuring that you do not purchase or waste time creating learning material you do not need.

Thus, employee training is a significant investment, but one that reaps rewards when done right. One way to reap these rewards at affordable prices is to consider Chart Learning Solutions for your employee training requirements. Chart’s award-winning courses, its LMS technology, and learning methodology, in the form of the Performance Assurance System, utilize the best tenets of online learning and make training enjoyable. When you need coaching, then Chart has certified Chart coaches around the world, available for you.

Chart’s business model also offers organizations the opportunity to create custom training programs for their workforce. The content for this would come from the +350 courses offered by Chart that cover everything from leadership j and team training to sales to customer service.

So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us for more information!