As we view 2024 in the rearview mirror, we put the past year to rest  and embrace a fresh opportunity to set new goals and dream big. Perhaps your plans for the next year include company growth in the form of more revenue, lower costs, and higher profits. With a heavy focus on your marketing plan, pricing adjustments, and overhead management, you might be ignoring an important investment that will help you achieve all of the above. Your people.

I’m not going to list the many benefits of training. Most agree that training is important, yet so many companies I’ve worked with just don’t prioritize this valuable business component. They play small ball by always trying to “win the day” or “get through the week” at the risk of losing the long-term gains of training. Past success has come on the shoulders of your team. And a trained team will propel you to the next level. Turbo charge your business in 2025 by developing an all-star team with a comprehensive training program. These six components are the foundation of your training program.

1. Needs Assessment

The primary purpose of a training program is to improve the business through employee performance. Identifying weaknesses and inefficiencies up and down the organization is an excellent starting point for building a training curriculum. Assessing individuals through testing and performance metrics will highlight opportunities for customized training. In either case, you want to be sure your training program is addressing business needs such as booked appointments, closed sales, quality installations, five-star customer service, cost controls, and employee satisfaction/retention. As a point of reference, keep your training program aligned with the company's Vision, Mission, Objectives, and Goals.

2. Content and Delivery

Once training needs are determined, it’s time to source content and decide on the best way to deliver the material. So much content is available online (like this article, for example), that you could easily find free standardized content for things like phone answering skills, troubleshooting HVAC systems, or sales techniques. Check copyright laws associated with your content to ensure it is safe. There are several excellent paid platforms out there, like SkillCat or Interplay, that have great technical training materials in a ready-made learning management system (LMS). Alternatively, you could write your own content. You can also leverage AI for assistance, but be sure you proofread and edit the material. AI is not perfect. Yet. 

As for teaching standard operating procedures and other company-specific material, you’re pretty much on your own for content development. However, utilizing a LMS like Trainual, Coassemble, or Articulate 360 will help you create content that is professional in appearance and user-friendly.

Give strong consideration to different learning styles. Some people prefer reading, while others may prefer audio content, visual aids or hands-on activities. Mix live training with virtual or online training. Vary the delivery systems regularly and make them interactive so you hold the students' interest and accommodate different learning preferences.

3. Culture of Learning

Training is not an event. It is a process, an ongoing, never-ending journey toward excellence. At best, we retain around 25% of what we’re taught in one sitting. Thus, good training requires rhythmic reinforcement. Lessons should be repeated often and reinforced by hands-on application. 

Leadership should be bought in and fully aligned with the training program. The entire company should not only value training but prioritize it, schedule it, and stick to it. Inspire curiosity. Foster an open environment where it’s OK to not know, but it’s never OK to not know and not ask for help. 

Great training programs have budgeted funds and time carved out for training events. Industry standards for calculating a training budget range from 0.5 to 2.0% of revenue. Others recommend 3 to 5% of payroll. We’ll talk about calculating Return on Investment (ROI). Even with a moderate ROI, I’d advocate spending more than the industry standard on training. 

4. Training Manager

Critical components to the success of any key initiative are focus, drive, and accountability. A training program is not sustainable without someone at the helm, driving results. Without a dedicated manager, your training program will forever live in that mental file folder of “things to do when I have time.” We both know how busy you are. Urgency often crowds out importance. 

Ideally, training a manager is a full-time job. If your budget is limited, then at least have someone focusing 50% of their time on this. Someone needs to own the training program and be held accountable for the results. It’s OK if other people own pieces of the training program (i.e. sales manager oversees sales training), but make sure one person has the vision, the game plan, and responsibility for executing your comprehensive training program. That person should be naturally curious, looking out for training needs, passionate about teaching, and knowledgeable about the learning process.

5. High Performance and Career Development

Today’s worker doesn’t just want a job. They want professional growth and a future. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, 94% of workers said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.

A superior program features improved performance against a backdrop of professional development aimed at a defined career path. For example, you could create a four tiered technician path complete with learning objectives, performance metrics, and pay increases at each level. Then, you could layer on training and performance opportunities to level up. This provides a road map for career advancement with an actionable plan to get there. 

Speaking of MAP, don’t forget to develop your managers. They want to learn, too. Training managers is a high-leverage move as they not only perform individually at a higher level, but they also provide leadership and support for the rest of the team, raising their performance as well. MAP has a strong track record of developing high-impact managers and leaders through workshops, programs, and individual coaching.

6. Training Effectiveness – Does it work?

While a comprehensive training program is important, it’s just as important to know if your training plan actually works. Most people fail to measure this. A standard question I ask trainers is, “How do you know you’re training and not just talking?” We want to make sure our training is moving the needle on performance, so I’ll borrow some concepts from Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation to help you evaluate your program.

First, it’s always good to include some form of post-training test. This could be written or performance-based but should be individualized, not group-based. Next, while passing a test is great, we really want to see a behavior change. Effective training improves behavior. Improved behavior generates positive results.

Some things are easily measured, like the call booking rate, average sales ticket, or callback cost. Other things like safety training may require visual inspection to see if the training resulted in improved behavior and results. 

Finally, if we did a great job aligning our training program with our vision, mission, objectives, and goals, and we’re measuring the right things, we should see an impact on the business. Again, track both individual performance metrics and company wide performance metrics. A simple comparison of pre and post-training will demonstrate the training impact as long as we allow enough time for the training to take effect. Remember, this takes time and requires rhythmic reinforcement of the training material. Some results may be immediate, but most will take 30 days or more. As a rule, I like to see a 90-day post-training window of evaluation. 

Mind you, if your data shows low test scores, or minimal behavior change, or negligible business impact, it’s time to take a closer look at the content, the lesson design, the delivery method and the individual learning styles. Employee attitude and mindset should not be ignored. By taking a critical look at training effectiveness and measuring results, you can now make informed decisions based on facts, not opinions or gut feelings.

Bonus! ROI

Measurable business results can typically be converted into financial results like increased revenue, decreased expenses, or increased profit. Armed with this data, you can then evaluate the return on investment (ROI) for your training expense, which, in turn, will help you make informed budgeting decisions around training. Now, you can justify hiring a full-time training manager.

Beyond the expected results of performance improvement, employee engagement, business improvement, financial gains, creating and following through on a well-designed comprehensive training program has several indirect benefits. It signals to your team that you care about them. It aligns managers and employees on what matters. It demonstrates to prospective employees that this company is organized and has its act together. It breathes life into those vaunted values like Excellence, Quality, and Learning that so often are just words on a wall. I can help you design or evaluate your training program. All you need to do is ask.

Rick Gutenmann is a senior consultant with the Management Action Programs. Contact him at rkgutenmann@mapconsulting.com.