6 days ago
Teaching The Basics: The Importance Of Micro-Level Training
Kathleen Hurley is the founder of Sage Inc., a tech company that offers SMB businesses infrastructure solutions and next-gen technology.
Without training, your investment in software is wasted, your employee value is reduced and your company's productivity is constrained.
You know the importance of training already, but considering what you choose to train your team on is just as important as offering training in the first place. Training on the right platforms, products and focus points can provide your team with the information and insights they need to make choices that support your business and allow it to go faster and further.
A 2016 survey conducted between different methodologies and organizational practices revealed that 44% focused on training employees toward improvements in quality. More recently, a LinkedIn Learning study from 2024 shows that the vast majority of companies train in order to retain employees. Quality and retention can go hand in hand, since the longer the tenure of the employee, the stronger the product delivery for the organization overall. Training that is based on a needs analysis is even more powerful and productive, since it is targeted and hits the points that the organization and employee will benefit from most.
These findings help businesses defend spending on something that may otherwise seem like a time and cost sink to some. Taking time away from production to attend a training session has to be justified by something, and a gain in productivity is what many companies are currently seeking.
While many companies may focus on high-level training areas such as Six Sigma, Lean and other methodologies, I would like to propose that it's the micro-level training topics that matter even more: training employees on the basics of their jobs periodically can not only enhance productivity, but it can improve quality and add a third, crucial element: employee confidence.
When employees have not had introductory training since their first month on the job, it can be a difficult task to remember what was explained, demonstrated and outlined during that introduction to Outlook, Word and Excel. Employees must not only be re-introduced to HR policy and cybersecurity training annually, but also given re-introductions to the basic functions of the programs and platforms they rely upon to produce their work.
The tools employees rely on are frequently updated, often without formal guidance. At the same time, job-specific tasks and workflows evolve in ways that weren't covered during onboarding. To keep employees aligned with both the tools and the evolving context in which they're used, companies should offer short, recurring refresher sessions. When these are built into the culture—not treated as one-off interruptions—they become easier to schedule, more relevant and more widely attended, especially by employees balancing heavy workloads.
Another approach that can help with retraining is the integration of computer-based training. While having an in-person trainer when possible is indispensable for answering questions in real time and informing the direction of the next training session, computer-based training allows additional flexibility for each learner. This is especially helpful when enabling employees to take courses on their own time when they're able.
No matter how you elect to design the training program, offering retraining as an option—even when a needs analysis suggests that no remediation is needed—can help reinforce skills through repetition and reintroduction. This approach can help boost confidence, increase speed and productivity, and improve the quality of output across the organization.
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