Budget-Friendly Training Tips for Small Businesses | Training tampa ...

Well-trained employees are critical to small business success, but how do you get there? Read on for some simple and inexpensive options you may not have thought of here.

Well-trained employees can contribute immeasurably to the success of your small business, but bringing them up to speed may not be an area where you feel you can afford to spend a lot of money. Never fear, because the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has some suggestions for employee training on a budget.

First, check out industry associations or trade groups that you belong to or can join to see if they offer training programs for members. This service is sometimes included in your membership fees; information should be available on the group?s website or in its newsletter.

Consider someone who?s already part of your organization. You?re looking for a person with strong communication skills who can interact well with others and has the patience to help them learn. If necessary, send them to classes and then have them share what they?ve learned with the rest of your staff. Alternatively, buy training materials and have your trainer use them to create your own training program.

Host regular brown-bag lunches where the goal is for all your employees to get educated and share their insights in an informal setting. Set a topic for each session and ask your staff to come prepared to discuss it. ?A sales rep might present an overview of the sales process, and how important each business function and individual is to ensuring a happy customer,? notes the SBA. ?An employee who is exploring a new way of doing business can also share it over lunch.?

Online training courses are an option that offers a wide variety of courses at low-to-little cost and enable employees to learn at a time and pace that?s convenient for them. A few organizations that offer a large selection of online classes and are on SBA?s?suggested list are Learning Tree, Dale Carnegie, BizLibrary and the Business Training Institute.

Cross-training employees within your organization is another option that can help create an agile workforce that can keep up as your requirements change. By looking at the various jobs in your company as training opportunities for others, you provide your employees with the opportunity to take on new roles and responsibilities that can help them move up the employment ladder. Job shadowing (where one employee follows another through their day to learn the ropes) and rotating roles to keep your workers challenged and open to new things are just two cross-training possibilities.

Start a mentoring program that partners new and less-experienced employees with a more senior worker who can take them under their wing and advise them on how to move up in the company. This is a particularly good strategy if some of your employees are getting ready for retirement and are willing to pass along their knowledge to eager-to-learn workers.

If the time comes when you need training that?s more elaborate, consider investing in an off-site program, which offers more interactivity and fewer distractions, and can be more time and cost effective if you are training a number of people at the same time. Ask around among fellow small business owners for suggestions, or contact your local Small Business Development Center or Women?s Business Center for local options.

Finally, before you start on a training program, set goals and methods for measuring success. Be as specific as possible about what you want your employees to achieve, and establish training goals for each of them. Let employees know that you?ll be assessing the training?s impact on their overall job skills and performance on a regular basis going forward, and that annual performance reviews will be used to gauge competency gaps and desired areas of improvement.

Training your employees doesn?t need to be difficult. With a little forethought, some research and an eye on the bottom line, it could even be fun!

Beth Longware Duff is a professional editor and award-winning writer whose work on a wide variety of topics has been published in print and electronic media. She currently writes on a wide range of topics dealing with electronic payment processing for Merchant Express. Visit Merchant Express for more great small business resources.

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Source: http://www.trainingtampa.com/2012/11/24/budget-friendly-training-tips-for-small-businesses/

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