9 Tips for Employee Training on a Budget

Investing in your employees comes with a tangible ROI. Even if your budget is limited, the return on investment will be noticeable because your team will become more motivated, stronger and the turnover rates will decrease. Further, it will show your employees that you care about their professional development and that you believe they will use every new skill to be more efficient and deliver better results. If you need tips to elevate your employees’ skills on a budget, we’ve got a few ideas. 

Identify skill gaps

Before you spend money on employee training, you have to identify their skill gaps. It’s cost-effective because you won’t spend money on the training they don’t need. By investing in training they do need, even if it’s quite costly, you’ll make the right choice and avoid spending money on the training they don’t need. Create a thorough survey to learn what they need or talk to team leaders in-person to learn which skills they need to sharpen. 

Create quality content once and reuse it

If you invest in quality premade courses or create one of your own, make sure you can easily upgrade it and reuse it later on. Record every seminar, in-house meeting, training, presentation, or anything else that can be used for educational purposes later on. This way you won’t have to spend on educational materials all the time. You’ll just spend money on additional material and repurpose the old ones. 

Take advantage of group learning

You can also join an industry organization in your niche that hosts seminars, workshops, and other group learning opportunities. Your employees will get a chance to learn from industry professionals and stay up to date with relevant industry trends and sharpen their knowledge. 

Create a mentorship program

You can also have employees cross-train each other. Senior members can mentor juniors so they’ll have someone to rely on when the workload increases. Alternatively, you can mix departments and encourage employees from different teams to partner up and mentor each other in areas they are good at but the other wants to learn. 

Find quality online courses

There’s a variety of affordable and quality online courses. The main benefit of an online course is that employees can learn whenever they have the time and at their own pace. In addition to this, you can invest in relevant RTO training materials so that your employees can access a wide range of learning materials at any time. Pairing proper video lessons with a relevant source of learning materials will be used by many employees over and over again. 

Your employees can host workshops once a month

You should approach this one carefully and present it as a way for people to upgrade their skills in an informal way. Remember to host a workshop during regular office hours and create a theme around each one so employees won’t feel obliged to attend. These workshops can be as informal as a group lunch over which people will share knowledge. 

Build a relevant business library

Another budget-friendly way to give your employees a chance to learn and increase their knowledge is to create an in-house library. There are many relevant books out there that can help your team excel in a certain area of knowledge. From ways to be more productive, to building a stronger business culture to the latest advertising trends, you can read all about it. But, to retain what a person read, you can have them read the book and outline the most important concepts. Other participants can come up with examples of how that knowledge can be used in day-to-day practices. 

Look for free workshops

The concept of webinars and online workshops has increased in popularity ever since the pandemic has started. While industry professionals are using this marketing tactic to build their online community by giving value for free, you can tap into this area of great learning potential.

Find an employee that is a good teacher

Another budget-friendly way to organize employee training is to find an employee that is good at presenting knowledge and is a born teacher. This person can be the chosen one who goes to training and comes back to spread the wealth to other employees. This is a great option if you simply can’t afford to send the entire department or a team to official training. But, if you choose the right person for this task, he or she will know how to present this newly obtained knowledge to others.

Read also: Employee Skill Development: Everything You Need to Know

As you can see, there are nine potential ways to train employees while being on a budget. Just remember that employees are a crucial element in your organization, so you should invest in their knowledge.