The importance of employee training and development

Employee training and development is key for your business success. Employees determine your company’s growth and survival on the market. They are a potential which is worth investing in and they can’t be perceived as a cost that needs to be cut. The company workforce should be viewed as a source of competetive advantage, especially since knowledge-based organizations are winning on the market. Therefore, it is important to build a company’s strategy based on intellectual capital.

The importance of employee training and development – table of contents:

1. Increased efficiency and motivation
2. Highly skilled workforce
3. Strong competetive advantage
4. Summary

Increased efficiency and motivation

Human resources and intellectual capital are terms that directly refer to employees. They are not determined by the number of employees, but by their potential and knowledge they bring to the company. In other words, these are the skills and competencies to perform tasks and reach business goals.

This specific set of knowledge is difficult to measure, but it should bring tangible benefits to the organization. Why is it so important to all organizations? The reasons are quite obvious:

• Human Resources have a direct influence on the effectiveness of your enterprise. Employees’ productivity is determined by their skills, education, practical knowledge, experience, set goals and values, attitudes, personality traits and motivation.
• Your company’s problems can only be solved by people and their intellectual capital.
• Thanks to creative and conceptual thinking, employees are able to identify opportunities and threats present in the closer and further company environment.

With their behaviour and attitudes, employees build and affect the relationships inside and outside the company, as well as create its image.

Highly skilled workforce

Company’s social responsibility for its employees helps to shape a healthy corporate culture, which is an important determinant of its competetiveness. Investing in employee training and development not only serves as a motivation, but it also enables your business to create a highly skilled workforce.

Investing in employees shows measurable benefits, such as:

• increase in work efficiency,
• maximum commitment to work and increased motivation to perform tasks well,
• securing future staffing needs,
• effective use of employees’ potential and skills,
• easy adaptation to changing circumstances,
• gaining loyal and dedicated employees.

Therefore, Human Resource Development should be treated as an integral part of the long-term plan and strategy of an organization. In general, Human Resource Development is a set of activities, supporting and implementing the process of improving the employees’ skills and modeling their attitudes.

As a result, it contributes to the achievement of set goals by the organization and its employees. Human Resource Development should be planned based on the identification of employees’ individual needs, aspirations and objectives in correlation with the company’s expectations.

Forms and methods of improving employees’ qualifications:

• practical training courses,
• seminars, postgraduate studies,
• planning games, role-playing,
• planning an individual career path,
• task rotation, self-study,
• coaching.

Strong competetive advantage

Employee training and development should be a common denominator for all companies that seek to gain a competitive advantage on the market. However, a development plan will not be the same for every company. Such a plan will depend on the following factors:

• Company size. Larger companies tend to have substantially bigger budgets for employee development and training. They are more likely to use external courses, which they can offer to a relatively large number of people. Small companies, on the other hand, are more focused on individual employees. They support their learning process, e.g. through postgraduate studies and coaching.
• Company profile. Human Resource Development (HRD) will be planned differently in a construction and in a trading company. Blue-collar workers usually only require a job-specific training or specialist course. Marketing and accounting specialists, in turn, should be monitored on an ongoing basis in order to improve their skills. In times of rapid development of technologies, it is necessary to keep up with all the changes and innovations. Therefore, employee training and development should be a long-term process.
• Business goals and strategies. Not all companies prioritize intellectual capital. They fail to see the benefits that are associated with human potential. Therefore, their strategic objectives may or may not include the development of human resources.

Employee training and development – summary

Employee training and development should be a deliberate and planned process, created on the basis of corporate strategy. It should be aligned with your long-term business goals. Although raising competences requires a lot of time and money, it will certainly translate into more effective employee performance.

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