Why Training is Everyone’s Responsibility

A successful organization starts with the proper training of employees. Training employees ensures every employee knows what is expected and knows how to avoid errors–making the company more efficient. In order to train employees properly, everyone in the company needs to be involved in the process. If everyone is involved in training new employees, it will increase positive company culture through trust, responsibility, and creativity. 

Positive Company Culture

Culture in a company is arguably one of the most important aspects for retention of employees and overall success. According to Dr. Pragya Agarwal, a contributor for Forbes, “A positive workplace culture improves teamwork, raises the morale, increases productivity and efficiency, and enhances retention of the workforce.” When a new employee is hired, they are typically excited about the job and notice all the positive facets about the company. As they learn more and more about the company, this excitement tends to fade. Ideally, you want employees to be just as excited about their job five years down the road as they were on their first day of training. In order to continue this excitement, they need to be trusted to train other employees, feel responsible for the company’s output, and be given the chance to think creatively and contribute that creativity positively to the company. 

Trust 

If the leaders in the company are the only people responsible for training new employees, other employees may feel they aren’t trusted enough to train people or get people excited about the organization. This is why employees outside the leadership team need to be involved in the training process. Rather than facilitating a meet and greet with employees on day two of training, consider allowing all employees to contribute to the actual training process in some way. This will make all employees feel trusted and validated in their current positions. 

Responsibility

Each employee in your organization wants to feel like they have a stake in the game. They want to feel like their work is important. If you allow employees to be involved in the training process, they will feel this validation. In addition to feeling validated, employees will start to take pride in this involvement, making them truly care about teaching others about the company. This pride and care will translate into success for the company overall. You will start to see employees getting excited about training, and they may even start to contribute new ideas. 

Creativity

How often do you change your training materials? Is it the same binder from 2005? This is a major problem with having only a small team or only the leadership team involved in the training process. Employees from different levels may be able to implement creative solutions to company problems that can be addressed during training. For example, maybe employees consistently have a problem with a certain type of software because they were never trained on it, but they all just do their best. If these employees were part of the training process, they would be able to address this issue from the start. The more people involved in a process, the more likely you are to see creative solutions to current problems, thus making the company more successful. 

Employees may be slow to agree to train new people at first, but once they realize this means you trust them, they will feel more responsible for the company, and even offer creative ways to train the employees. Training in a company needs to be everyone’s responsibility in order to build positive workplace culture and have a more rewarding organization.