Successful businessman and philanthropist Richard Branson said that companies should train people well that they can leave the organizations. But the caveat is that companies should treat them well enough, too, so that they don’t want to leave. At the core of this business advice is the word “train.” Employers should prioritize giving their employees the proper skills so that they can do their work more effectively. Do not expect your employees to enter your organization bearing all the skills and knowledge they need. They will learn while doing the job, so the company must do its part, too.

Most companies will organize a training program just because. These training programs lack focus and attention to detail. Effective training begins by identifying what each employee needs. Employees will be more committed to the company if they know that the organization cares about their personal and professional growth. But how do you build this culture of learning, and how do you get people to care about work training?

Open Opportunities for Them

In Singapore, educational institutions, such as the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), offer SkillsFuture courses. These are programs designed to promote lifelong learning among Singaporeans who are eligible for the initiative. These courses can easily be accommodated by busy professionals since some of these programs run for just a day. Employers can encourage their employees to look for these kinds of programs so that they can improve their existing skills or learn new ones. Let them decide what skills they might need in their current work.

Avoid Mass Training

Do people in your human resource (HR) and information technology (IT) departments need the same training? HR personnel needs people skills, while your IT people need to improve their skills against hacking and detecting fraudulent transactions in the system. This alone proves that they do not need the same kind of training, so why will you make them attend the same one? Make the training personalized because nobody wants to sit in a lecture about what they already do. They know that already.

Invest in individual training. This is when you tailor the programs to the individual needs of your employees. This will help bring about clear goals and expectations. Your team will better understand their strengths and weaknesses as members of your company.

Don’t Give Mass Feedback

Are you often in the habit of congregating your employees to tell them they did a good job? Worse, do you complain about their performance as a group? Instead of giving mass feedback, why don’t you call each person to talk to them about their performance. If you are going to appraise them for promotions, you might as well use the meeting to talk to them about their future goals and what they have to work on to reach those.

Implement a coaching system where managers will do individualized training. This will also help you identify who among your employees deserve a promotion. It’s also easier to see who among them have the capacity to improve themselves.

Identify How Others Absorb Information

Everyone reacts to information differently. Some can easily overcome learning hurdles and absorb what is being taught. Others need concrete experiences to learn. Still, some learn by comparing their experiences to the lessons. Active experimentation is another stage of the learning cycle. This means that employees will take the good ideas to test them out.

There’s an assessment test to determine what is an effective learning process for a person. Make your employees take the assessment so it’s easy for you to identify the kind of strategy or technique that will work for them. Once you know what method to use, that’s when you should look for a program or training that will suit them.

Use the 70:20:10 Model

The idea behind the 70:20:10 model is this: let people find out for themselves. The Kolb theory believes that most people learn from doing, so it comes out with this model, which states that 70% of learning comes from doing, 20% from other people, and 10% from courses. If you apply this model, you will see that your employees need to be responsible for their work as well. If they make mistakes, you have to let them own up to these but open the doors to learning from the incidents.

Good training is all about knowing your people. If you don’t know their strengths and weaknesses, you won’t be able to develop the right training program that they will be interested in, too. Listen to them when they want to share and suggest something. Let them know that they’re allowed to voice their opinions. After all, it is their professional well-being at stake.