Team training is a type of workplace training that an entire team unit or department undergoes together. It’s a fantastic way to upskill your staff, increasing revenue and improving company growth.
However, the benefits of providing tailored training to your team extend far beyond enhancing their productivity and performance on the job. Challenging your employees to grow and acquire new hard and soft skills is a great way to drive workplace engagement. And that’s not all - workers increasingly view employers who facilitate on-the-job training as more desirable to work for than those who don’t.
This doesn’t just go for new workers, either. Across the board, team members employed in a myriad of industries understand that workplace training ensures they have the requisite technical skills to fulfil their role and helps them keep up with the demands of a dynamic and ever-changing employment market. A PwC study published under the title “Workforce of the Future: The Competing Forces Shaping 2030” found that 74% of workers are open to re-training or acquiring new skills to remain employable.
How to start training your team
Part of developing any training schedule for your team involves understanding what your training should look like and how it can best be facilitated. The following steps account for a generic approach that you can take when introducing team training into your organisation.
1. Identify your company's training needs
It’s important that whatever your company needs from your team's training aligns with its business goals. To better understand this, it’s often helpful to think of any skills in your staff and go from there.
You may also find it helpful to distinguish between hard and soft skills here; would your team benefit from acquiring new technical abilities or knowledge in a growing technology like AI? If so, depending on your field, your staff may find our ethical AI for good business course helpful. An example of soft skills-based training that many organisations find beneficial is 'Diversity and Inclusion' training.
2. Setting clear team training objectives
A clear outline of your expectations and objectives is vital for your team training. Goals and expectations give the whole process a much-needed structure, not just in terms of how the training should be facilitated but also what your employees should achieve as part of it and according to what timeframe.
3. How to tailor training to your team
For your training to be effective, it should be tailored to the needs and specifications of your team. Co-designing a university course is a fantastic way to achieve this; it allows you to ensure your training is of the highest standard and that your staff receive an education relevant to their skillset and the broader market.
4. Create an environment of communication and collaboration
Another essential consideration to make is that you have the best possible learning environment for your team training. Think about whether remote or in-person training would be more appropriate; in cases where training is carried out remotely, is there any possibility of delivering it via a hybrid model so that your staff can discuss and practice what they’ve learned in person?
5. Give ongoing support and feedback
It’s crucial that your employees feel supported throughout the training process, and providing them with feedback on their performance is a vital part of this, as well as helping them understand their progress.
Encouraging management to offer plenty of feedback to employees during their training is key here; this helps your staff understand how well they’re meeting expectations and what they might be able to improve while they undergo training. This process sets them up for a better outcome by helping them feel more engaged in the entire process.
6. Measure training effectiveness
You must assess or evaluate how effective your training has been. Teams learn at different paces and in various ways, so you’ll want to develop a metric for how much your staff have learnt and managed to retain. For instance, carrying out some form of testing is a common way of doing so.
Team training at UTS: Reskilling 1,000+ employees for Telstra
Not only is it Australia’s largest telecommunications company, but Telstra has recently restructured its workforce to reflect changes in its operations. The organisation expanded upon the skillset it offers consumers to include a suite of data-related services, like analysis and gathering.
This was only possible, however, in collaboration with Plus UTS. While Telstra realised there was a significant gap in the market for accessible and reliable data analysis and processing services, its staff had neither the means nor expertise to be able to deliver anything near what the company was envisioning. So, Telstra worked with Plus UTS to develop a range of short courses to train its employees in machine learning, data engineering, and data analytics.
