How to Write an Employee Training Plan: Examples that Inspire

Kyla Ball February 22, 2023

What is an employee training plan?

An employee training plan is simply an outline of the key skills, competencies and knowledge that your staff require to fulfil their job role(s). The key purpose of any employee training plan is to enable your team members to learn new skills, and develop those, within the workplace. It is likely that even the smallest of businesses will require a number of different training plans depending on individual employees’ skills and the key competencies required in your particular business sector.

Any well thought out plan should outline the overall goals for training, the timelines involved, and a guide as to how staff will go through the training process, whether that’s in-person or online.

Why is an employee training plan important?

By providing team members with effective learning that meets their individual needs, the best types of employee training plans help ensure that staff are well-prepared for their job role. It also prepares them to tackle any changes and updates in the workplace and sector. In addition is means that any skill gaps can be identified and remedied.

Developing staff training is a time-consuming process. It’s a good idea therefore to create a set of employee training programs which between them will encompass all the potential training needs of your current and future employees. These can then be used as the basis of employee training templates for new team members who may join in the future – and adjusted as necessary of course.

The benefits of an employee training plan

For employees

Providing a training plan boosts employee confidence, enabling staff to be better equipped to handle new challenges on the job. It can also help employees identify potential career goals and make an active decision about how best to reach them.

For employers

In turn this will lead to a higher level of job satisfaction amongst confident and competent team members. You are likely to see a higher rate of employee retention from staff who feel they are valued and receiving the training they need.

Being able to demonstrate that you provide new employee training and that you put a high value on upskilling your staff will help attract the best candidates for any new roles you advertise.

Overall, in providing the right training for your employees, you will boost employee performance and are far more likely to reach your business goals more quickly.

What should a training plan include?

Your training checklist should incorporate:

• An initial training needs assessment; this should help you identify your training goals. What are the knowledge gaps in your organisation? Consider that there may be short-term goals that can easily be met with training, as well as long term initiatives that your training can help with.
• An outline of the types of training sessions you plan to provide. These should incorporate a range of alternative training methods – acknowledging that there are many different types of learners. Consider how the training will be delivered: will it be instructor-led? Will training courses be outsourced or provided in-house? Will training materials be delivered in person, online, or blended? Perhaps there will be an aspect of ongoing mentoring provided as part of the plan?
• Metrics and milestones for measuring progress. As well as metrics for each individual module, it’s also essential to identify milestones within the training program so that each employee’s progress can be tracked.
• Don’t forget to provide ongoing assessment of the learning outcomes and training objectives that you decide upon. These may change over time as your organisation grows or your business changes and evolves.
• Your employee training plan template should also include some sort of structure that provides ongoing support and feedback wherever necessary. What do your staff feel about the training? Is there anything they would change or anything they feel is missing? Provide a platform for them to feed back into the training plan. This can be anonymous if that would make staff feel more comfortable in submitting responses.

Employee onboarding for new hires

Ideally, new employees should be able to hit the ground running with the key information they need to do their job – which may include company policies and company structure as well as key skills, knowledge and competencies. Therefore a clear onboarding process for new hire training is one of the most important employee training plans that you can create. Make your onboarding plan easy to visualise with an interactive roadmap or timeline like the one below.

The perfect way to present and embed your employee training plan

This New Joiner Induction Roadmap above is a clear visual representation of an example training schedule which sets out the steps in order with information embedded in rich media tags. This type of roadmap can in fact be adapted and used for all types of employee training plans. Links to the training modules can be embedded in the interactive tags and tests and assessments can be easily incorporated. Explore our examples below for more use cases where employers have created training with ThingLink.

Have you considered diversity training?

Another key element of employee training is DIE or diversity, inclusion and equity training. This helpful blog covers What to include in a Diversity and inclusion training plan.

Further examples of employee training using interactive online learning

Here are some more examples of how these employers used ThingLink to create training for their employees.

• Fingrid creates virtual safety briefings with ThingLink
• Norelco use virtual learning environments for safety training of electricians
• Using virtual tours to create online customer service training
• Scenario-based learning (SBL) is quickly becoming the industry standard for corporate learning or workplace learning and development. Learn more in this blog all about Scenario Based Learning for Corporate Training