A Guide to Creating an Employee Training and Development Program
Clarke Ricks School of Business,
Liberty University
BUSI 690: Policy and Strategy in Global Competition
Dr. Hicks
May 7, 2022
A Guide to Creating an Employee Training and Development Program
Creating an employee training and development program from scratch is a challenge. Do it
right, and you will give your organization a foundation for success for years to come. Do it
haphazardly, and you will find yourself working and reworking the program, eating up valuable
time.
This is your guide to starting (or growing) your organization’s training and development
program the right way. Once you have the fundamentals down, you can fast-track your
program’s deployment by using a training library, like that offered by HSI. Using existing off-the-
shelf content can help you build the program faster, especially if you are the one solely
responsible for training at this point.
What is Employee Training and Development?
When discussing new programs and initiatives, the term “employee training and
development” gets used as if this were some single thing that HR departments need to create.
In reality, “training” and “development” refer to different things, though they are two sides of
the same coin.
Employee development is the overall process an employer provides to employees to help
them gradually improve skills, acquire new knowledge, and progress in their careers.
Employee training is a program designed to develop and improve technical and soft skills
and knowledge to do a specific job in a more efficient, successful, or safer manner.
Each training class or course supports the progression of the employee through their
development plan. One way I visualize the difference is by thinking about what an architect
does, versus what a contractor does.
An architect will design a building and, with input from the client, decide what the overall
building will look like when it is done: How many stories will it be? Will it have a foyer? Where
will the stairs be? Will there be columns facing the street?
A contractor, on the other hand, is much more interested in the concrete details: What
supports are needed under the flooring? What bolts are needed to secure the stairs? When do
we mix the concrete for the columns? How do we guarantee that the building is built to code?
Development, then, is working with your employees to be an architect for their careers.
Training provides the “concrete details” in the form of skills and knowledge needed to support
each step.
Creating Your Employee Training and Development Program
Training, then, is a core aspect of employee development. But development is not simply a
set of training courses strung together over time. There must be an overall plan for
development to happen. Your job is to create a template for those plans, one that will
ultimately justify the resources your organization is putting into training.
Here’s the outline for creating your own employee training and development program:
1. Recognize goals
2. Identify competencies
3. Do a gap analysis
4. Interview employees
5. Offer formal training
6. Add coaching/mentoring
7. Allow self-directed learning
Step 1: Recognize Goals
When developing a training and development program, the temptation is to start looking
at tools, training courses, and timelines. Resist this temptation and step back a moment. What
are the overall business goals you and your leadership are trying to achieve? What are the
intermediate steps or milestones leading to those goals?
Does your company’s strategic plan involve mergers or acquisitions? You will need a plan
for change management and sharing the common mission, vision, and values. Maybe there is a
renewed focus on customer service. How does it extend beyond your front-line employees?
Step 2: Identify Competencies
Competencies are groups of abilities, behaviors, knowledge, and skills that impact the
success of employees and organizations. Some examples of competencies are Customer
Service, Business Acumen, and Building Effective Teams. Once you have identified the
competencies your organization wants to foster, it will be easier to define learning tracks for
employees that instill those competencies.
Why competencies, rather than, say, individual skills or job requirements? Competency-
based learning is now a mainstay in the most successful businesses. In one study
by Development Dimensions International (DDI), 89% of best-in-class organizations had core
competencies defined for all their roles (compared to a mere 48% of all other companies). A
separate report by Fortune and Aon Hewitt found that a full 100% of companies making the
global top companies list use a well-defined competency model.
Step 3: Do a Gap Analysis
A gap analysis is simply a report showing where your employees are today, as contrasted
with where you want them to be when it comes to their competencies.
It is likely that you already have plenty of data and information with which to start a gap
analysis. Your official HR records might already hold things like standard job descriptions,
performance evaluations, and even accident and safety reports. Start with these. You might
also have other formal tools, such as employee assessment or 360-degree reviews. If not, it
might well be worth investing in some so you can get a clear, objective picture of your
workforce.
Step 4: Interview Employees
Remember how I said that an architect works with the client to make decisions about the
building being designed? That kind of partnership is critical for employee development, too.
In fact, there was an eyebrow-raising study done by communication training company
Fierce that surveyed 800 leaders from various organizations and found:
44% of employees felt that workplace practices were ineffective and often hindered
employee productivity and morale.
50% said the lack of company-wide transparency and the lack of employee involvement
are primary areas of concern.
Less than a third of employees felt their input made any difference.
Ouch! Needless to say, if your employee development program is going to work at all, you
need to talk to your employees and listen to them. The most important thing to do is to find out
what their own goals are within your company. You might have an employee in IT, for example,
that does great work and has a good rapport with the rest of the team. He looks, from the
outside, like a prime candidate to be promoted to a management position.
But does he want to be a manager? What if he is perfectly happy in his current role and has
no interest in leading others? No matter how much training you have in your back pocket,
forcing that new role on the person may create resentment, set them up to fail or leave the
company.
There are other things you can learn from talking to employees, too: You can get their
insights into the findings from your gap analysis, find out how and when they prefer to learn,
and so on.
Step 5: Offer Formal Training
With the preliminary work done, now it’s time to target those gaps in employee
competencies. A formal training program should be put together that assigns specific training
courses to your employees. These should include not only job-specific skills, but also general
business skills and soft skills training.
What form should these formal training sessions take? For many skills, short online video
courses will fit the bill. These can be off-the-shelf videos on common topics (compliance, safety,
communications skills, etc.) or custom-made videos.
Step 6: Add Coaching/Mentoring
Mentoring and coaching are not at odds with training. In fact, mentoring can be an
invaluable addition to your training program, especially for developing your high-potential
employees.
A mentoring program creates relationships among employees that allow for the
development and transfer of knowledge in order to help the less experienced employees grow
professionally. Matching mentors and mentees is a critical component for creating a successful
program; you will have to match employees based on:
Experience. There shouldn’t be too big or too small of a gap between the experience of
the mentor and the mentee. The mentee needs to be able to learn and be challenged, but not
overwhelmed.
Expectations. Both parties should know what to expect out of the relationship. The
mentor needs to see the relationship as more than just an opportunity to “share war stories,”
for example.
Compatibility. When mentors and mentees have similar approaches and styles of
communication, the relationship is often much more fruitful. For example, you might consider
getting a DISC assessment and matching employees with similar personality types.
Once you have determined potential matches, go ahead and draft some guidelines and a
mentoring agreement. This helps formalize the relationship and can prevent some issues that
might develop down the road.
Step 7: Allow Self-Directed Learning
Your high-potential employees will be motivated to learn and advance on their own. Take
advantage of that! Open up your learning library to employees so they can find the courses
they want (and take them at a time that works for them).
In fact, there are several benefits to allowing for such self-directed learning: It better
accommodates different learning styles, increases the speed of professional development, and
gives you a better ROI for your training dollars.
In my experience, I have found self-directed learning to be particularly beneficial to
employees for learning:
Soft skills. Employees often do not like to admit they need help with soft skills. But there
are so many useful ones to practice and learn: Decision making, multitasking, creativity,
communication skills, and more.
Business math. Let us be honest: By the time we get settled in our careers, we’ve
probably forgotten 18/20 of the math we learned in school. (Did you pause to figure out if that
should have been 9/10 or 90%? See, I have made my case!) Learning the math needed for
business is easier (and less embarrassing) when you can go at your own pace.
Point-of-need skills. Imagine an employee who has never had to negotiate before but
now finds herself in the position to buy an expensive custom software tool for their
department. How wonderful would it be if she could watch a four-minute video on basic
negotiation skills!
