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5 tips for building a successful TLD programme

There are many ways to make your staff feel cared for – like remembering their birthdays and the names of their family – but nothing says ‘you’re valued by us’ to an employee more than the offer of training, learning and development (TLD) to help them develop their skills and build their career.

Here are our top five tips to building a successful TLD programme:

1. Set a magic number

As a provider of training courses, we always promote the benefits of training but we really do practice what we preach. We ensure each member of our team has a minimum of four hours of TLD time each month. Why four? We believe that’s the minimum we need to provide to ensure staff remain engaged with their role and confident in their skills.

When asked to rate the importance of TLD to them, our employees scored it 9.5 out of 10!

A robust policy which encourages TLD from the day someone starts until the day they leave is a great differentiator in today’s competitive recruitment market.

75% of our respondents think they would receive less TLD if they took a job elsewhere!

2. Have a fresh start each month

Everyone’s TLD clock resets monthly. The last thing we want is for someone to go on a two-day course and then think we won’t want them to do any more TLD for the next few months! We see the best results when TLD is a routine part of each employee’s monthly calendar as this boosts productivity.

When asked to rate the importance of training to raising productivity, our employees scored it 9.25 out of 10!

3. Let your staff do the asking

We encourage colleagues to find training that suits them. Some prefer online training, others prefer face-to-face. We routinely offer over 25 different types of TLD, including peer-led training, mentoring, external courses, webinars and attendance on our own training courses but we always encourage employees to suggest new options.

All employees felt that the training received this year had improved their confidence.

4. Engage the Matrix

Each of our employees has a competency matrix which outlines the skills they need to do their job effectively. These are regularly updated and reviewed quarterly. Over time, employees become more confident as they can see their competencies build.

When asked to rate our provision of TLD to help them complete their particular tasks effectively and confidently, our employees scored it 9.25 out of 10!

From an employer perspective, the matrices help us identify areas of risk such as only one person having a high level of competence for a particular task. We can then address this through further training. They also help us maintain compliance with ISO 9001!

5. Check TLD hits the spot

Training is an investment so we always ask external delegates to rate our training courses so we can ensure they meet delegates’ needs. We take the same approach to any training delivered for our staff.

When asked to rate the quality of internal training provided, our employees scored it 8.1 out of 10.

We are delighted with this as many of our training hours are delivered by employees yet the rating equals that given to our external training providers. This reflects the level of care employees give to ensuring the training they provide to peers is professional and relevant.

The ultimate measure of success

We believe our TLD policy strongly influences how our employees rate us as employers.

100% of our employees would recommend ISO Quality Services Ltd as a good place to work.

Would you like to evaluate your training?

We use a free survey website, Survey Monkey, to collate our feedback as this automatically collates responses and produces charts and graphs in seconds.

You may be interested to know that the same platform can be used for customer satisfaction surveying which is an integral part of the ISO 9001 Quality Management System.

We’re also pleased to say that 89% of our delegates would recommend our training courses.