Training and Development Affecting Company's Business Strategy

Before you start any training program, you need to understand what skills are essential for executing your business strategy; otherwise, you could be providing training and development for skills and knowledge that may become obsolete as you move forward with your strategy. Learn to tie your training content to specific business strategies.

If your strategy is to target various market segments with your products or services, consider developing multiple training programs. Each program should instruct employees in how to service their particular market segments. For example, if you have a smartphone that can be sold to teens and may also be sold to young mothers, offer two different training programs; one to help employees become familiar with the technology demands of an adolescent audience, and the other to show employees how to deal with communication issues young mothers face. The effectiveness of this training directly influences your ability to service each market segment.

If your strategy is to maintain distinct departments that have separate functions, such as finance, marketing and human resources, then your training should reflect that separation. This strategy can work well if you need departments to focus on doing complex tasks without outside interference. Your training helps develop employees who have an intimate knowledge of the workings of their individual departments. This type of training has a direct effect on your company’s ability to build competent, stand-alone departments.

You may adapt to strategies of creating groups of employees who specialize in a single product line. They become specialists who understand product costs, features, benefits and marketing appeal. Your training in this case is product-centered, and the goal is to develop experts who know a product inside and out. Such training determines your ability to maintain product lines that were individually profitable.

You may have set a goal of capturing market share by beating out your competition. If you conduct an analysis to determine your competition's weaknesses, you can train your employees to be strong where your competition is weak. Such training can directly affect the success of your strategy of outperforming other companies in your field.

Your strategy of innovating and using the latest technology is directly affected by the quality of the technical training you provide. Your employees must be adept at using the latest software, hardware, cloud-computing functions and social media in order for you to stay on top.