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Ongoing Training: Its Benefits and Why You Should Consider It

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Ongoing training empowers employees with knowledge and skills which in turn boost employee performance and satisfaction.

Ongoing training for your workforce is the need of the hour.  Business dynamics are changing at an exponential rate and change has become the global norm. Current times make it more important than ever to train your employees regularly. 

What Is Ongoing Training?


Ongoing training is a form of training where the learner is continuously trained and not just as a one-time procedure. This method increases knowledge retention among the learners.

Importance of Ongoing Training

Ongoing training challenges traditional classroom-style training methods which are ineffective, since people forget about 70% of what they learn within just a day. When training is reinforced with continuous assistance and guidance, learners retain knowledge for much longer.

When regular training is provided, employees have the knowledge and skills they need to efficiently carry out their work. Employees that do not have to struggle to carry out their daily work are much more satisfied with their job than ones who struggle.

Employees are much more satisfied with their job when they are provided ongoing training and support. They feel assured that any queries they have will be resolved quickly. A digital adoption platform provides on-going training to your employees with the help of in-app guidance that is accessible 24/7.

Apty is a DAP that enables on-the-job training and improves the efficiency of your employee training program.

The Business Value of Ongoing Training

A. Increased Retention and Low Turnover

An organization’s retention and turnover rates are highly indicative of the experience they provide to their employees and how stable the organization is as well. By providing on-going training, your employees are well-trained and satisfied with the job, helping them stay with the company for longer. A report found that turnover can cost organizations anywhere from 16% to 213% of the lost employee’s salary.

On-going training keeps them updated with the skills they might need in the future to take up more responsibilities. This is great for the organization as well as the employee since the employees get promotion opportunities and the organization gets to retain their top talents.

B. Improved Profitability

When you invest in on-going training and learning methods, employees feel more satisfied with their job, and it has a positive effect on their performance. Your business’ profits and performance are directly linked to the effort that people put in. Quality training improves your team’s communication, increases customer satisfaction, and boosts profits.

C. Quality Service or Product

When employees are rapidly reskilled and upskilled, it contributes to increased productivity and engagement. Engaged and productive employees are committed to the cause of the organization and will put in effort to improve the service or product that the company offers. This is especially true when employees are trained in problem solving and technical skills. Your workforce is self-sustainable and iteratively improves the quality of your service or product.

D. Competitive Advantage

There are new businesses opening up every day and the world is getting more and more competitive by the day. Training and development practices plays a huge role in developing a competitive advantage and stand out from the crowd.

In ensuring that your employees constantly progress in terms of technical, communication, and collaborative skills with on-going training, you ensure that your company gains more value and moves forward with a strong position in the market

Today organizations realize the value of employee training and according to Forbes, in 2018 alone companies spent more than $87 billion and this number is increasing at 10% a year.

The benefits of ongoing training are many, you can prepare your workforce to be future-ready, and all set to take on your competition. 

There are other benefits as well which we will study in detail in this blog.

Benefits of Ongoing Training

  • Increased Retention Rate and Productivity
  • Job Satisfaction
  • Identify the Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Great Motivator
  • Staying up to date with Industry Standards
  • Better Sales and Superior Service
  • In-house Promotion
  • Employee Satisfaction & Loyalty
  • Measure and Analyze

1. Increased Retention Rate and Productivity

With workplace becoming increasingly dynamic, companies are adopting new technologies to stay ahead of competition. As a result, employees can face a new challenge that might make them demotivated to continue in an organization.

To make sure they stay with you, you have to facilitate growth opportunities. And that can never happen by simply providing onboarding training. Businesses have to go beyond that and provide regular, corporate training consistently that they can look forward to.

Increased-Retention-and-production

In a study conducted by Glassdoor, on an average a company spends about $4000 to get a new hire and the minimum waiting period is about 24 days which in some cases could go well beyond 52.

So, by providing ongoing training you are not only ensuring that your employees stay productive but you are also increasing the retention rate. 

Especially true with Generation Zs and Millennials, who want to be trained regularly to stay ahead of the curve. 

KeyTakeaway: Ongoing training program boosts the productivity of your employees and increases the retention rate.

2. Job Satisfaction

Struggling with your day-to-day tasks and not loving what you do could make employees frustrated. This will eventually result in poor productivity and ultimately to lack of job satisfaction.

Whatever an employee learns during the onboarding training will not come in handy to them immediately and overtime employees will forget it.

Job-satisfaction (1)

It is noteworthy that due to the forgetting curve employees will forget 70% of what they learn in a month. To counter that, you have to not only enable ongoing training but also On-demand training.

It is essential to incorporate multiple training methods within the organization to enable a work environment where every employee gets an opportunity to bolster their knowledge and skills.

Further, the modern workforce is looking for new opportunities to learn and excel in their careers. If your company can provide exactly that by preparing the workforce with relevant and regular training then your employees will have a satisfying experience.

Key Takeaway: Employees will be satisfied if companies invest in ongoing training. It will help them to better and efficient at their job. 

3. Identify the Strengths and Weaknesses

Ongoing training is an excellent way to identify skill gaps. It is important to know the strength and weaknesses of your employees and regular training sessions provide you with an opportunity to address them and act on them.

You might not know where your employees stand concerning their job preparedness unless you have regular training in place.

Identify-strengths-and-weaknesses

You might invest in technology but your employee might face a problem using it. In such scenarios, even though you know the problem exists you may not able to make the right decisions because it becomes difficult to know why and where the problem exists.

Here is where ongoing training comes in and changes the game by helping you identify the issue that employees might be facing while using the new technology.

Moreover, it helps you to know the form of training that is working in favor of your employees and the organization’s growth. Knowing this will help you to keep the training that is working while incorporating the new ones to cover up the weakness.

The collage of all these will ensure that your company keeps its strengths intact while overcoming its weaknesses.

Key Takeaway: Regularly training your employees will help you to identify skill gaps. Based on that you can design an efficient training curriculum that can help your employees to overcome those gaps.

4. Great Motivator

Empowering your employees by training regularly boosts their confidence. By training employees, you can fuel their careers and this play an important role in their professional growth.

Great-Motivator

As employees learn new things and excel in their job, training them further will motivate them to do even better in their jobs to get an opportunity to learn the latest trends and processes.

This will make your employees efficient and they will play the role of a catalyst in guiding your organization in the right direction.

Key Takeaway: Ongoing training could motivate your employees to perform better and will guide your organization in the right direction.

5. Staying up to date with industry standards

It is always in the best interest of the company to stay updated with the latest best practices and trends that the industry is following.

Staying-upto-date-with-Industry-standard

Business leaders must take initiatives and allow their employees to stay updated. A knowledgeable and up to date workforce can produce great results for your business. 

Changing from traditional methods to modern methods could be painstaking but it will reap rewards in the long run. Further, it will ensure that your employees are ahead of the competition and get better out of the newly adopted practices.

Key Takeaway: If you train your employees at a regular interval of time then you can easily make them up to date with the latest industrial trends and best practices.

6. Better Sales and Superior Service

Sales and Customer Service are crucial to the success of any business in today’s world. They represent the brand value and creates a brand image in front of your customers.

Better-sales-and-superior-service

They should not be out of sync with the industrial standards and the technology that the company uses. It is vital to regularly train them and equip them to always put their best foot forward.

The concept of ongoing training is not only limited to traditional ways, but you can also incorporate modern training methods like:

  • Microlearning
  • In-app training 
  • Virtual and simulated learning 

These training methods will allow your Sales and Customer Service Teams to consume information, knowledge, and skills as per their convenience without changing their schedule.

Using an in-app training platform like Apty effectively will save time and help your employees make the most of their trainings. Not only that it will make your customers opt for your brand for efficient customer support.

Key Takeaway: Sales and Customer Service are people-facing departments and making them skillful and knowledgeable could give better value and results to your business. 

7. In-house promotion

Ongoing training creates a capable workforce with an adequate amount of knowledge and skillsets. When your existing employees possess the necessary skills then it becomes easier to promote them rather than looking for a new hire.

In-House-promotion

The cost per hire varies from $4000 to $7000 for 24 days which could go as high as $50,000 if it takes more time than expected.

The recruit may not be familiar with your company’s culture and way of doing things which will not make them immediately productive even if they are skillful. This also costs heavily for an organization.

Regular training and development is costly but it is not as costly as hiring a new employee. Training an existing employee will give you a better ROI.

Key Takeaway: Ongoing training prepares your employees to take a better position within the organization. Promoting an employee is always better than hiring a new employee as cost per hire is higher than training employees.

Learn about:  How to measure your digital ROI on your digital investments?

8. Employee Satisfaction & Loyalty

The main benefit of ongoing training is that you can create a sense of loyalty by providing them the type of training they really need.

Sense-of-Loyalty

Whether you can organize a session with industry experts, influencers, or facilitate On-demand training for your employees, the idea is to make them better at their jobs and give them a new perspective.

Doing so is no doubt beneficial for your organization but it also makes your employees feel that they are an important asset for the business.

All this amounts to gaining their trust and loyalty which is the dream situation for any successful business.

Key Takeaway: Regular training creates a sense of loyalty among employees as they feel like the company cares for them and their growth.

9. Measure and Analyze

Ongoing training can show unexpected results. Many ongoing training formats like LMS (Learning Management System) and DAP (Digital Adoption Platform) give you valuable insights on how your business processes and training are showing results.

Measure-and-Analyze

It is important to analyze how your training initiatives are showing results in real-time. With Digital Adoption Platform you can:

  • Analyze how the application is being utilized by your employees post the training.
  • identify where the employees are struggling within the application and create a microlearning content for the same in pdf, ppt, and video format.
  • Reinforce your training with the customized walkthrough that guides your employee from one step to the other.
  • Store all the relevant documents, information, links, and videos that your employees might need for training.

Using an Intelligent Digital Adoption Platform you can optimize your training efforts and make it more relevant for your workforce.

Key Takeaway: Measuring becomes easy using On-demand training programs like a Digital Adoption Platform. It not only trains your employees within the software but also helps you to understand how they are performing after the training.

Learn: How Employee Software Training can be made efficient with DAP

Ongoing training plays a huge role in boosting the employee performance and ROI of the organization. It is mutually beneficial and helps everyone to grow together to achieve their respective goals.

Training is not a one-time thing and should certainly never end with the onboarding. Training is an ongoing process and organizations must be proactive enough to update it regularly.

FAQs on Ongoing Training

1. What is ongoing training? 

Ongoing training is a form of training where the learner is continuously trained and not just as a one-time procedure. This method increases knowledge retention among the learner. 

2. Why is ongoing training important? 

Employees forget about 70% of what they learn within just a day. When training is reinforced with continuous assistance and guidance, learners retain knowledge for much longer and better. 

3. Why do organizations provide ongoing training? 

Organizations provide ongoing training to constantly reskill and upskill their workforce and to increase employee engagement and productivity.

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Krishnan Kaushik V

Krishnan Kaushik V

Krishnan is a Marketer and Content Crafter. He has an in-depth understanding of Digital Adoption, Transformation, and Enterprise applications that helps business to generate business outcomes. In his former life, he was an IIoT & Automation engineer. You can find him trying new recipes, riding a bike, and wondering about the most complex object on the face of the earth i.e Human Brain.

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