How To Tell If Your Team Need Training

Unless someone is brave enough to disclose that they need some training, how can you recognise that an individual or your team as a whole probably need to be trained up in some areas? What are the classic signs and symptoms of a team that need training? Here are three ways that may indicate that your training schedule is well overdue:

More supervision is needed than normal

If you have a member of staff doing a task or job outside their normal comfort zone, check to see how much supervision is needed. Some of us hide our inability to do the simplest of tasks by conveniently asking someone else to do it or to supervise us again and again. Sometimes it's embarrassing, such as not knowing how to work the office fax machine, and sometimes its more fundamental - for example, someone taking over a section of accounts and not fully understanding the numbers put in front of them.

If your staff seem happy in their role but there are some tasks that they never seem to do alone or seem to delegate out at the first opportunity, this could be a sign that they need training in some areas. Whether it be a Microsoft training course or emotional intelligence at work training, you may need to raise your team training game.

Volunteers are lacking

If people want to further their career, their enthusiasm for taking on new tasks and responsibilities will show - if they have the requisite training and knowledge. Someone who doesn't think they have the skills will hold back and never volunteer for any new work (or they may just be satisfied with the job they have, but these people are rare!). If you are getting fewer and fewer volunteers for tasks that should - under any other circumstance -be pounced upon, then this may indicate a lack of training in the ranks. Generally, if people have knowledge - they want to use it. The same with training... you have to use what you just learned, or lose it.

Recruitment leans externally

If you have well trained staff, then they are going to want to apply for promotions and a better salary as a result of their increased skill set and knowledge. Recruitment drives can be an excellent indicator off whether or not your team need training. For a start, if you cannot think of a single internal candidate to fill a job via a promotion, and the people you meet in interviews from other companies seem to have more skills and knowledge than your team - then it's time to wonder whether your own people are lacking the training to take them forward. Not only that, untrained staff cannot take the company forward as a whole, either.

These are just some of the indicators that may reveal a weakness in your training plans. If you don't normally review your training needs as part of your normal appraisal procedures, then you're not only selling your staff short, you're stunting the growth and expansion of the company, too. Any good training provider will help you to arrange bespoke training - so why not try filling that gap today?