5 Affordable Forms of Employee Training And Development
Training options and development programs for employees can bring uncountable benefits to the employees and the business as a whole. Especially in today’s economy, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to shell out the money to pay trainers or for training courses that employees can attend. Fortunately, several affordable options are available for employee training and development that tips the cost-value scale that training can provide.
Consider these five options of affordable ways to train and develop employees.
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Share the Resources
Turn to your employees as a primary source for training materials. You are likely to find that your employees read self-help books or invest in training courses to help make them better professionals. Encourage employees to bring in any materials or courses they have to share with their fellow employees, supervisors, and managers.
Contact local colleges or universities. These educational institutions often have textbooks and other training materials no longer in use – or that they have in excess. Ask if you can borrow the materials or buy them at a reduced rate. In some cases, they can donate the materials to you at no cost.
Gather all of these materials to create a resource library. Dedicate an office, conference room or area of your business to housing these training materials. Employees can access the library of resources when they want or need to do so. You can also schedule formal training sessions and courses using the acquired materials.
Be Thrifty
Dedicate some time or the time of an employee to research some of the top leaders, authors, and trainers. Compile a list of books and courses these individuals provide. Shop online sites for used versions of these books, training materials and training courses. Add these to your resource library or buy enough copies to hand out to each employee that you want to benefit from the information.
Attend and Share
Register one of the employees from your business to attend a training session, conference or course. Have the employee bring back all of the training materials and their notes. Schedule a formal session or a series of individual sessions where the employee can share all of the information they learned during the training with the other employees in the company.
Use Virtual or Online Training
Virtual or online training offers a myriad of cost savings to companies. First, it cuts out the cost of travel expenses, such as airfare, hotel accommodations, and meals. Second, registration fees for virtual training tend to cost less per person than face-to-face training options. Finally, virtual training reduces the amount of time the participants are out of the office – keeping unproductive times to a minimum.
Partner with another Organization
Share the cost of training by forming a partnership with another organization. When you identify training courses or materials that can benefit both organizations, split the cost to purchase the materials. You can hold group sessions where employees from both companies come together to train simultaneously, or you can create a schedule where one company has the material for a certain time frame and then hands it over to the other company for a set time frame.
Training can be beneficial but it can also be expensive. Discover ways to offer employees the training they need and want without breaking your training budget.
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