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When we think of employee training, we typically think of two things: safety and training on procedures.

However, there are many types of training from which your employees could benefit, including diversity, sexual conduct, customer service, and quality assurance. Furthermore, there are many different ways to present training material.

Consider the following types of training your employees could benefit from.

Different Types of Training

Training can do more than just make your team more efficient or safer at their jobs. It can also improve your company culture and reinforce your overall mission. For instance:

  • Diversity – This type of training is meant to reinforce the idea that diversity should be a strength, not a weakness, of an organization. Diversity training may deal with addressing cultural assumptions or showing how to appreciate differences in the context of the workplace.
  • Business Ethics – For children, the difference between “right” and “wrong” is pretty simple. For adults, however, that difference includes a lot of grey area. By addressing common ethical concerns and discussing best practices, ethics training can help get everyone in an organization on the same page.
  • Communications – Today’s professionals have all kinds of things to consider when it comes to communication. Should email be used for urgent matters? Who should be contacted about quality issues? What should we use Slack for? Communications training can help employees make sense of all these factors.
  • Customer Service – At many companies, employees must wear many hats. Receptionists, service reps and others many have the specific responsibility of dealing with customers, but others in a company may have occasional interaction with customers. Customer service training can also help everyone to better understand the roles of service representatives.
  • Safety – Safety training is mandatory for most employers under OSHA guidelines. This type of training is most important when employee deal with heavy machinery, but the typical office environment isn’t completely free of safety hazards.
  • Sexual Conduct – Sexual conduct in the workplace is a topic that can be awkward to discuss. However, employers that don’t train employees on sexual conduct are being negligent, and foolish. Employees need to know what kinds of language and actions are appropriate within their organization.

Different Ways of Training

When it comes to training employees, many companies go with the basic instructor-led classroom model. This way of training is effective at covering the necessary material, it is isn’t the best way to fully engage employees in the learning process. Below are a few other types of employee training to consider:

  • e-Learning – Platforms for e-Learning are designed to engage trainees through videos, quizzes and interactive games. Typically located in the cloud or on the company intranet, e-Learning also allows for significant flexibility.
  • Hands-on – Research shows that engaging multiple senses can significantly boost learning and retention. When you get trainees out of the classroom and working with their hands, training becomes more engaging and more effective.
  • Mentoring – Mentoring is a highly effective way of training employees. Mentoring should be a two-way street, when mentees learn from mentor’s experience, and mentors can learn fresh, up-to-date new ways of approaching their job.

Let Us Support Learning at Your Organization

At Cornerstone, we support professional learning and development through strong partnerships with our clients. Please contact us today to find out how we can support your organization.


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