8 Learning & Development Resources to Improve & Engage Your Workforce

As one of the facilitators of talent development within your organization, you can improve your workforce by providing learning and development resources to your employees. A highly-skilled workforce is more capable of meeting your organizational goals, and employees are more engaged with their positions if they feel they have chances to develop beyond their current role.

That’s why I’ve put together a resource list for employee trainings and educational opportunities that can improve the skills of your workforce. There are many options for employee learning, such as:

• Off- and on-site workshops, such as those offered by Business Training Works and Evoke Development.
• Seminars conducted by the American Management Association, SkillPath, and US Small Business Administration.
• Lunch & Learns you create and conduct at your office.
• Mentoring programs that pair entry-level leadership with senior company leadership.
• Cross-training.
• Discs & other software-based resources.
• Free online courses, such as those provided by Open Culture, Lynda, and Alison.
• Webinars and webcasts, which are usually free and conducted by a broad range of companies and disciplines.

Each of these training methods has pros and cons, and your training and development plan should be tailored to the employees you intend to teach. If considering learning and development resources for employees, you can complete a simple online quiz to determine which kind of learners your employees are and segment their education based on whether they learn better by visual, auditory, or tactile methods.

• Some people are auditory learners and learn best by hearing information spoken aloud, so mentoring and seminars may be most advantageous.
• Your visual learners often learn better by seeing things without auditory distractions, so self-paced online and software learning may be best for them.
• Tactile learners retain more from touching or actively completing tasks. They like to move around when learning and can benefit from practice-based tasks often found in workshops and during cross-training.

What Should I Teach Employees?

Not many employees are great at every skill that can benefit an organization, so there’s always something new to be learned. For example, your admin staff may benefit from learning and development resources for employees that focus more on compliance in your industry, which would enable them to field peer inquiries related to legal business processes. The digital age ensures that every employee can benefit from more technical training.

Companywide training should focus on both hard and soft skills:

• Business skills, such as public speaking and presenting, delegating, and goal setting.
• Compliance education, including training on diversity and inclusion, harassment and discrimination, and employment laws and regulations.
• Technology and computer skills, such as typing, data entry, and word processing and spreadsheet programs.

You might be surprised to discover how many of your employees have never delegated, don’t know what to do in a workplace emergency, or have no training in setting up email filters. To figure out what your employees are most interested in learning, you can easily set up an anonymous digital survey through a free provider like SurveyMonkey and create an educational plan based on organizational areas of weakness. Learning and development resources for employees are key to your employee engagement strategy.