Resharpening Your Employees’ Skills

The skills of your employees are, unsurprisingly, a crucial component to the success of your company. Without up-to-date skill sets, a company could be putting the stability and growth of their business in jeopardy. Resharpening allows for employees to refresh or update old skills, as well as learn new ones along the way.

Training
Employers need to make their business a learning experience for employees. Employees need coaching for them to handle their job with due diligence. Companies must train their employees on things like new equipment and procedures before starting working. Proper training will help boost the employee’s confidence as they handle their work, reflecting on their productivity. Training includes having a clear channel of communication where a company can share information on what they expect, as well as giving employees feedback.

Implement an Internal Mentorship Program
Implementing an Internal Mentorship Program is one way to help resharpen these skills without spending any money or time outside of what they are already doing at work. These programs allow for employees to refresh or update their old skills, as well as learn new ones. A mentor can teach the mentee about all sorts of things related to their job, from how to use specific programs like Microsoft Excel or Word, to how best practices change over time, and even offer general tips on how they do their daily tasks.

Encourage Free Online Courses
To encourage your team to take advantage of free online courses, you must offer them various options. The first thing a company can do is look at MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). These are similar to what one would find in an academic setting, but they don’t have any formal prerequisites and allow access to anyone with a computer and internet connection. They are an excellent way for company employees to stay current on industry-specific topics or brush up on skills that might be rusty from time away from work. Additionally, there may be certain types of training offered by your employer which can provide CEUs (Continuing Education Units), such as CPR, First Aid, OSHA Training, etc., all of which can also be done online.

Offer a Learning Experience
New organizations may have a larger number of employees who are not as skilled as they can be. This can happen for various reasons, but the main reason is that they are not training their employees well enough or investing in them. Thus, it is essential to let your employees learn from other, more experienced employees within the organization to grow their own skills.

Originally published at https://bryanziegenfuse.org on September 23, 2021.