Whether your organisation is already well-established, internationally recognised, or you're just a small start-up, one thing for sure you cannot ignore the tremendous benefits of a properly trained and developed workforce can bring.

There is not a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to employee training and development. You need to design a program that addresses your company's specific training needs.

But how to do it right? How do you make your program to go from "It was meh" to "This is the best company I've ever worked at"?

Read more: Duplicating your top employees

Planning for your employee training for further development

As the war for top talents continues to rage on, a good training and development program can help to distinguish your company from the rest as well as to help you retain the right people.

Some factors to consider when designing a training and development program for your employees can be summarised as followed.

The structure of your training and development programs

Many L&D professionals would get overwhelmed with the portfolio courses as they are often repetitive, too vague as they're trying to cover as many topics as they can, or sometimes they're outdated and does not fit with the VUCA environment.

• The target of your program: Your senior employees would have vastly different training and development requirements from the newly onboarded team members. Therefore, if you're selecting the training platforms and courses, consider the one that suits not only your organisations but also for each individual learner.
• Training materials and environment: You would be tempted to do everything in-house to save cost. But the in-house method is only effective unless your company is equipped with a full-fledged L&D team with specialists in eLearning and course design. Do also take into account input from other departments and the prospective trainees to create a more well-rounded program.
• Internal vs. External training: There will be times when doing training internally is much more effective but utilising external sources can also be a cost-effective and more viable option (such as coaching, mentorship). This factor tied up with the first dot, it really depends on the needs of your employees and organisation.

Read more: What should your employee's development plan contain?

Train and develop a multi-generational global workforce

Look around your office, it is likely that there are people from at least two different generations currently working together with you. And if you work for an international corporation, you also work with people from different countries and have different cultures.

One learning style might be well received by a certain group may not be the same for others. The collaborative group training methods may be favoured by the Millennials and Gen Z, and the one-on-one sessions are preferred by the older generations. The delivery styles, age groups in addition to the multi-languages, multi-cultures are the factors that your organisation should look at when designing your educational toolkit.

Read more: Is a multi-generational workforce an advantage or a threat?

In all and all, remember that not all of your employees are willing to learn new skills, some would even question the application of what they've learned during the program, or why should they get trained in the first place.

Your training can only be better if you also include feedback from the participation after training. Embedding their feedback into the future training is a great way to ensure your courses remain relevant, up-to-date, and is favoured by those that matter the most.

Read more: Fear of change - Why even bother with changing at all?