5 Effective Ways To Reduce Training Costs Without Sacrificing Quality

For organizations of all sizes, proper employee training is a key part of business success. In this guest article from Jenna Bunnell, you’ll learn how you can reduce the cost of employee training without losing out on quality.

No matter what type of organization you’re in, you’ll need a talented and efficient team behind you. To provide your employees with the expertise they need, it’s important to deliver a high-quality training program.

Staff training is crucial, yet the key challenge comes down to cost.

An effective training process relies on a significant budget, multiple resources, and plenty of planning.

Why is employee training so important?

Without adequate training, your team will fall short of its true potential. Your employees need opportunities to build on their skills and knowledge.

The employee onboarding process directly impacts both productivity and talent. In fact, 77% of employees who go through onboarding programs meet their goals in their first performance reviews. On the other hand, new hires who are not offered formal training struggle to meet their performance milestones.

With the help of high-performing employees, you’ll boost customer engagement. Well-trained staff has higher levels of job satisfaction, consequently, training can reduce costly turnover. Staff training also improves employee confidence. When staff feels self-confident, they tend to be more dynamic and creative.

How much does it cost to train employees?

In 2019, companies spent an average of $1,500 on training per staff member. Despite the costs involved, employers cannot afford to skip appropriate training programs.

Remaining competitive in your industry relies on the talent and output of your staff. Investing in staff training will improve employee productivity and increase your bottom line.

What happens if you don’t train your employees effectively?

Unless you train your employees effectively, you risk low profitability and productivity. Without proper training, employees produce a lower quality of work, which has a negative impact on customer satisfaction.

In-demand skills change over time, as do sector trends and regulations. If you fail to invest in development and training, you’ll struggle to build a future-proof company.

Training opportunities can help you to attract the best talent and drive your company forward. A Workplace Learning Report from LinkedIn discovered that 94% of employees will stay longer in a role if their employer invests in training.

What are the costs associated with employee training?

Smaller organizations often don’t have a huge budget, so startup funding can be difficult to manage in the early stages. For this reason, it’s in your interest to reduce costs where possible.

There are many expenses associated with employee training, including:

1. Learning materials

Organizations must ensure that employees know how to deal with assignments. They’ll need instructions to adhere to company best practices. Leaders should create learning materials including manuals, guides, and educational training courses.

Alternatively, organizations can purchase third-party content. Though convenient, this is the more expensive option.

2. Tech for onboarding

Once you’ve created or purchased learning materials, you need to decide how to deliver your training content. Organizations have several options to optimize employee onboarding.

The first option is to offer in-person training, so you may need space to do this in-house. You’ll also need the appropriate equipment (for example, an interactive whiteboard). The second option is to train your employees remotely. To do so, you’ll need to invest in video conferencing equipment and software.

Companies may prefer to use a third-party platform to host their learning course. Some organizations even develop their own learning management systems. Creating a custom-made LMS is expensive, yet the investment pays off. With a custom-made learning portal, businesses can avoid ongoing subscription fees for third-party systems.

3. Time is money

Not all training costs are transparent, as the old saying goes, time is money. Time spent on employee onboarding is time lost on projects and day-to-day operations. According to Bamboo HR, ‘onboarding should take at least three months.’

Organizations need to strike the perfect balance between budgeting and quality training. To reap the benefits of quality training business leaders must invest. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce training costs without sacrificing quality.

5 Effective ways to reduce training costs without sacrificing quality

1. Focus on virtual training

In-person training workshops arrive with extra costs including venue hire, catering, and

travel. On the other hand, virtual skills training helps you to eliminate these costs, without compromising quality.

Video conferencing software allows you to deliver virtual training with ease and convenience. Organizations can use video meetings or webinars to deliver excellent training sessions. Online training helps you to provide a quality experience in many ways:

• Recording options: When you deliver training through video conference systems you can easily record your training sessions. Training content can be paused and replayed, or accessed later on, at the employee’s convenience.
  
  
• Consistent training experience: If you’re a remote company, with employees in various locations, it can be difficult to offer a consistent training experience. Virtual training enables you to provide both consistency and quality, at an affordable price.
  
  
• General video conferencing benefits: Video conferencing tools allow companies to operate remotely. Companies can host virtual stand-up meetings, with employees working from multiple locations. E-learning offers many benefits to both employers and employees.

2. Develop your own training

Purchasing third-party training content is incredibly convenient. Despite this, it’s more cost-effective to develop your own training content. Instead of opting for external content, have your in-house experts create training courses.

To develop high-quality training content, you need to analyze your learning materials. Organizations should provide sessions that help employees engage with problem-based learning strategies.

When assessing your training content, the following questions may come in handy:

• What must employees know to reach the learning objectives?
• What skills do employees need to carry out the objectives?
• What activities will help staff to grasp the content?
• What are the typical mistakes that learners make on this topic?
• How will I assess employee knowledge?

3. Mentoring

There are many different ways to facilitate training on the job. Mentoring is currently one of the top employee training trends. Your organization has experienced staff with plenty of knowledge and talent. Having these people act as mentors is a low-cost way to train new hires. Besides saving money, there are many benefits of offering mentoring programs:

• Mentorship schemes encourage a learning culture.
• Both the mentee and mentor benefit from professional development.
• Decreases turnover and improves job satisfaction.

4. Reproducible & scalable processes

Employee onboarding is crucial, but it needs to be approached in the right way.

The key is to create an onboarding experience that’s reproducible and scalable.

Organizations should develop a pre-made onboarding process and the experience should be the same for everyone who joins that department. Some highly specialized roles may need their own processes but, for the majority, a uniform experience will suffice.

A standardized onboarding procedure will help your organization to save time and money. This way, you can ensure that all employees are given the same quality of training. When you offer a standard onboarding process, you’ll boost productivity and staff engagement. A successful onboarding process can also improve staff retention.

5. Assess learning needs first

Most employers understand that training is imperative, but not everyone is sure where to start.

The first step should be to put together an employee skills gap assessment. When you assess the needs of your learners you can find out which type of training you need. Determining your skills gap means you won’t waste money creating irrelevant training materials. To perform a skills gap analysis, focus on the following steps:

• Plan your assessment: How will you find out the skills that are missing in different departments? (You’ll probably need to meet with team leaders and executives to discuss this).
  
  
• Establish your goals: The next step is to determine your goals. What do you want to achieve with your organization? What skills do your staff need to help you reach these goals?
  
  
• Consider automation: An increasing number of businesses are using automation in the workplace. To support your employees, you need to think about how automation will affect their roles. What extra skills will they need for the future?

When assessing staff training, business leaders should also reflect on how they can develop their own skills. Whether it’s leadership courses or reading the best project management books, there are many ways to improve and learn.

Employee training can be a significant investment, yet it’s an investment that reaps rewards. With great training processes, organizations can boost productivity, improve customer satisfaction, and drive profitability. To manage costs, companies must strike a balance between quality training and affordability. Fortunately, organizations can save money with virtual learning, mentorship schemes, and by developing their own learning materials.

Remote learning has many benefits, yet there are also challenges. To provide a successful remote learning environment, employers need to focus on real-time class engagement. By paying attention to training trends and new technology, business leaders can empower their staff, and remain competitive.

Want to Learn More About Cost-Effective Group Skills Training Programs for Your Organization?

For more information about how to support the success of your team and your organization through group skills training, reach out to our Employee Engagement Consultants.

Author Bio:

Jenna Bunnell – Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Dialpad

Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. She has written for sites like NtaskManager and LuckyOrange. Check out her LinkedIn profile.