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Internal training for HR teams – What’s the best approach?

HR teams fulfil an absolutely crucial role in many businesses. Providing internal training is essential, to ensure that they’re equipped with the knowledge and practical skills they need to carry out their role as effectively as possible.

Internal training can be carried out in a wide range of different ways, and it can be tricky to work out which approach might be most suitable. To help you work out which could best for your business, below we go through some key tips, from the importance of blended learning to providing feedback.

Training needs assessment

With HR teams, as with any other form of training, it’s important to carry out an in-depth needs assessment beforehand to work out exactly what needs working on. It’s generally best to get an external provider in for these assessments, as it can be difficult for internal assessors to take a completely unbiased view of how things are going. Once you know what it is that needs working on, then you can start to take a more personalised approach to the training programs you develop.  

Try blended learning

HR is a lot more than just theory and remembering statistics. As a result, the most effective method of providing training is generally through an approach known as blended learning.

This takes a holistic view of applicable learning strategies, encouraging classroom training, e-learning courses from providers such as Staysharp.global, workshops, and ongoing, on-the-job forms of education. It’s generally a lot more effective than just providing lessons through a single kind of lesson format and can be a lot more engaging for learners as well.

Bring in experts

If there’s a single area that your HR team needs instruction on, then it can be massively beneficial to bring in experts with experience in that specific area. They’ll be able to provide insights derived from real-life experience, and will often be a lot more engaging than typical generalist instructors.

They’ll often be up to date with the latest trends and best practices in the industry, and can be an amazing way of enriching the overall learning process.

Simulated scenarios

A lot of HR consists of broaching sensitive topics with other individuals. As a result, part of the learning process should consist of creating simulations of typical scenarios that might arise in the workplace.

Simulating these kinds of situations can really help to show HR teams how to practically apply their theoretical knowledge effectively, while also making the learning process seem like less of a chore.

Feedback is crucial

Finally, you need to make sure that regular in-depth feedback forms a part of your HR training program. You need to evaluate how well the team is learning, so that you can work out where they may need additional work and see how you can improve the quality of the course for future learners.

As is clear by now, the most effective approach to training in HR is generally to take a range of different tactics. There’s no single form of learning that’s best – you need to teach different topics in different ways, taking the best parts of all the different approaches.