Top 10 topics for employee training and development

Table of contents

1. How to generate topics for your employee training
2. Top 10 topics for employee training and development
3. Create excitement on boring employee training topics
4. How to set up your training - next steps
5. Easy LMS makes your training topics shine

How to generate topics for your employee training

Trained employees are happier, stay in their jobs longer, and produce more than employees who are not trained. But if you are new to the process, finding employee training and development topics might seem daunting. It takes a lot of money and time, there are various topics to cover, and you don’t know how to start. Not anymore! With our help, you can easily get started with your employee training and development program.

First things first, depending on your organization’s primary activity, you need to train for technical skills and soft skills. You need to identify your company’s main activity and the main job roles involved in getting that activity done. Which skills do these roles require?

You may need to get some help from seasoned employees to put together training material that teaches those skills. Ask each department for input or to come up with content themselves.

Also, you can consider which departments in your company need the most urgent training. Aside from the critical technical skills mentioned above, you may consider starting with the employees that are the face of the company, such as the customer support representatives and salespeople. Having them trained will increase your client’s satisfaction with your brand immediately. Then, you can move forward with training other parts of your organization.

Here are a few ideas on training topics and methods you can use for your employee training and development [1].

Top 10 topics for employee training and development

1. Technical skills. What are the skills needed to perform a particular job in your company? Getting them trained on those skills and assessing their knowledge with tests can improve the quality of your products and services.

2. Customer service. Most companies have to deal with customers regularly. Training employees in customer service teaches them how to provide customers with a great experience, deal with angry customers, and say “no” when necessary. This training will make your employees more confident and prepared to deal with different scenarios.

3. Sales. You can help your salespeople achieve more by teaching them how to engage the clients in conversations, follow up with clients, and pick the right moment to offer a discount or an additional product. Sales training can help your employees sell more and provide your customers with a great onboarding experience.

4. Communication. Employees must understand how to communicate well with colleagues and clients. For that, you can teach some best practices: how to write an email, the correct tone of voice to approach a client, how to answer the phone, or how to handle disagreements with colleagues in a constructive manner.

5. Ethics. Ethics training can help shape your company culture positively and maintain a good reputation for years to come. It’s important to communicate what constitutes ethical behavior and what kind of behavior violates the ethical code. Developing the moral intuitions of your employees helps them deal with potential problems.

6. Safety. Safety training provides the knowledge necessary for employees to do their jobs safely. They may get some onboarding training on that matter. Still, it’s important to remind them regularly.

7. Industry rules and regulations. Yes, it can be boring, but it's necessary. This employee training topic is usually part of mandatory or compliance training. It’s essential to learn and abide by the rules to avoid fines, and lay the groundwork for a partial or complete defense of the company in the event that employee wrongdoing occurs despite the organization's training efforts.

8. Workplace harassment. No one likes to work in an environment where psychological and sexual harassment is tolerated. In many places, that is also illegal [2]. Help your employees easily identify these situations by giving them important information on this topic. It is also crucial to explain which steps employees can take if they suffered or witnessed harassment in the workplace.

9. Equality and diversity. This training topic facilitates positive intergroup interaction and reduces prejudice and discrimination in the workplace [3]. Having a diverse team gives your company a good reputation. According to research, it also pays off, considering that diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams [4].

10. Personal development. Employees want to know how much they can achieve in their professional lives, and personal development training can help. From personality tests to coaching sessions, this type of training helps your employees stay motivated and fulfill their full potential.

Create excitement on boring employee training topics

It’s not news that employee training can be boring, especially when it comes to compliance (mandatory) training on topics related to rules and regulations. But it all depends on how you set up your training. Here’s how you can make any topic of your employee training and development program more engaging:

• Add videos, images, audio files, and presentations with visual effects. You can create videos and take your own photos, but you might not have the time or budget for this. In that case, there are thousands of free videos and images available on the internet that can make your training material more fun. After all, adults are not that different from children when it comes to a preference for content that is visually appealing.
• Let them take the training from their smartphone when they have time. Make your employees even happier by allowing them to learn from their smartphones when they have time. To keep some control over that, you can assign them tasks to complete by a certain date. You can also give them some time off or give them a bonus for learning in their spare time.
• Show them their progress. Make your employees feel proud by showing them their test results and giving them certificates after completing a course. You can also create fun quizzes with a ranking, to spark some competition between colleagues.

How to set up your training - next steps

After you decide on the topics to cover with your employee training, you can put everything together in the training material. Get feedback from the professionals who provided you the information to get your work fact-checked and quality-checked.

Once your training material is approved, you can set up a focus group and deliver the training. After a certain period, you can monitor them to check whether it has improved their job performance and job satisfaction. You may also give them tests to see if they improved their knowledge about what they learned.

Positive results will give you the green light to expand your training to more departments and eventually the whole company!

Easy LMS makes your training topics shine

Setting up your employee training and development on a variety of topics is easier with Easy LMS. Why? Well, to start, it’s much more affordable compared to other employee training methods. But here are additional reasons to consider it:

• Flexible. Your participants can learn whenever and wherever they want as long as they have a modern device with an internet connection.
• Multiple options to share and style your learning content (in your brand). Share your courses and tests via URL, embed them on your website, or publish everything through a learning portal. Change colors, fonts, and images to match your brand.
• Multiple test formats and question types. Choose between Courses, Exams, Assessments, or Quizzes. Even better, combine all the options to achieve different learning goals. Use question types that include text, images, audio, or video files.
• Possibility to track progress. Let your participants know much they progressed by sending an email with their test results or generate a branded certificate at the end. View and download everyone’s results in an Excel file and store them on your computer.

Useful resources

1. ILSA Inc.
2. iSight
3. Wikipedia
4. Harvard Business Review

Frequently Asked Questions