Small businesses may not have the same training and development budgets as big corporations, but there are many inexpensive ways to develop your skills as well as your employees. With these affordable ways to pursue training there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a regular part of your business practices. Here are some inexpensive ways to develop skills in your workplace.
Explore free or affordable online courses or training: The internet is full of amazing resources to learn new skills from! LinkedIn Learning offers a free trial, and sites like Coursera covers so many different topics for free. Even YouTube if full of endless content on almost any subject you can think of. If there's something you'd like your employees to learn, take some time to search on any of these platforms and get your employees started on learning new content!
Group training: Paying for a facilitator to come teach a group something rather than paying per person for training results in a lower overall cost, and usually you have a better overall outcome because you’re learning together PLUS it can double as a team building activity!
Show and tell: Pay for one person to attend a training but let them know in advance that when they come back they’ll need to prepare a presentation for others on the team to learn about the topic as well.
Creative team training: Explore easy ways to learn together through developing a bookclub (lots of books have free discussion questions online), or you could read a few chapters at a time and discuss along the way. Another option is with podcasts - you can pick educational episodes and debrief them afterwards.
Training and development is very important in the workplace for many different reasons. We recommend setting aside a few hours monthly for this, or implementing a quarterly half day. You’ll likely see the following improvements in your organization:
Retention: Many employees like to learn and grow and they will be looking for a workplace that supports their development.
Minimizing skill gaps in your organization: There’s no better way to ensure your organization keeps up with the skills you need than allowing your employees to use company time to gain the skills.
Are you looking for a group training opportunity for leaders in your organization?
Our Learn to Lead program is the perfect fit!
Our 5-module leadership training program can be delivered in-person or online to your leadership team. Each module focuses on a different area of leadership to ensure that by the end of the program, your team has a strong foundational understanding of what being a strong leader means.