For both new and existing employees, training is an important part of understanding and improving roles and responsibilities within a business. By investing the time, money and resources into extending the knowledge and enhancing the skills of your teams, your company will benefit from a huge return on investment, including increased productivity, performance, and profits.
For the manufacturing sector in particular, training is vital to guaranteeing staff have the required experience and competence to carry out their duties efficiently, accurately, and safely. But when targets often take priority, it’s even more essential to ensure training doesn’t fall by the wayside.
What are the Advantages of Training Employees in Manufacturing Roles?
The primary purpose of training is to ensure an employee knows what to do so that they require less supervision and are less likely to make mistakes. In a manufacturing environment, such slip-ups can potentially lead to damaged products and processes, costly downtime, and even injury or death.
Training is often described as an ‘investment in people’, and this is often the case when increased knowledge can lean to additional duties or internal advancement. By providing the opportunity for further learning, you’re enabling employees to make a greater contribution to the business. This can lead to stronger teams, better managers, successful promotions, and improved retention rates.
What Types of Training are Applicable to the Industry?
Employees at all stages of their careers will benefit from ongoing training, which should include sessions specific to their roles as well as wider topics of importance, such as health and safety, leadership skills, and mental health first aid training. These can be delivered in-house or externally.
Delivering the same training to a range of employees can also bring teams together. Not only can knowledge and experience be shared but relations and communication can be strengthened, leading to greater consistency within a company and a more cohesive and efficient business practice.
The manufacturing sector has seen significant changes in recent years, including the move towards ‘Industry 4.0’ whereby operations have become data-driven using a ‘constant flow of real-time information on process performance’. Being vigilant to change is vital for business development and growth and should include training employees so they can keep up to date with industry shifts.
What are the Best Practices for Delivering Training?
There are many options available for manufacturing training, including on or off the job, in-person or virtually, one-off sessions, or as part of a longer course or qualification. Subject-specific training can often be arranged in-house while other topics such as IT can be covered by an external professional.
Video training has become especially popular in the sector. Whether live or pre-recorded, employers don’t have to worry about finding a suitable location or take up valuable production time. Video conferencing technology allows training to be highly interactive, fully flexible, and easily repeated.
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