How much should you spend on staff training?

The amount of money you should spend on training your staff depends on the industry you work in, and how quickly your employees’ skills become out of date. In some industries, regulations or technologies are constantly changing. If you don’t keep your staff trained you could find that your company is losing its competitive edge and knowledge base.

You also need to take into account your staff turnover. If you are lucky enough to keep your staff for a long time, you won’t need to send them on so many training sessions. However, training is often seen as a perk of the job – so don’t neglect your long-standing staff completely – or you might find that they decide to go elsewhere.

Video training and e-learning can be great ways to keep costs down. Buying videos which can be watched as often as required is a cost effective way to train new staff. Video is an engaging medium with a highly visual and memorable content. Staff can gain wide experience from simply watching a lifelike scene enacted on the television. They can go to places that they would not have had the opportunity to visit and hear real people talk about their experiences and share their stories.

E-learning allows your staff to train at their own pace. They can work at their computer, either alone or in a computer laboratory with other learners. They can skip topics that don’t interest them, or repeat topics that they need extra help with. This is personalised learning to the masses. Complete low cost e-learning packages can be purchased for many topics.

Some companies put aside a percentage of their staff’s salaries to work out how much should be spent each year on training: this is often between 1 and 2%. Staff training is an area where budget cuts are felt the hardest. Training budgets can be cut and, at first, productivity will not be harmed. However, training is a long-term investment in your staff and any reduction in training budgets will eventually work their way down the chain to affect your customer, and your bottom line.

BBC Active supply high quality BBC television programmes to businesses for use in staff training. Take a look at the range of health and safety training videos and business training videos.