Service and manufacturing industries, scientific and technical firms, and government agencies all require highly trained staff. Management must ensure that employees are aware of changes in regulations and standards, new technical upgrades, or improvements in processes. While there are several forms of training businesses can employ, below we’ll consider the benefits of on-site training.
Time and Cost Savings
When your organization provides training on-site, there are immediate savings. Employees don’t have to travel, there are no hotel or airfare costs, and they don’t lose learning time getting to and from an off-site location. Making the effort to contain costs for training may be attractive to funders, as well. Grantmakers appreciate wise budgeting. If your state offers grants for workforce development and training, a proposal for on-site training might be attractive.
Information security
If your training requires display or distribution of confidential information, procedures, or evidence, conducting the program on-site means all your usual security precautions are in place. You have the option of creating and conducting the program with experienced staff training newer staff, or contracting with an outside training firm. If you go the route of hiring a contract trainer, specify the security requirements in the contract, along with remedies for any breach of confidentiality. When you offer on-site training, you don’t have to worry about employees losing laptops, forgetting to secure their phones, or logging into insecure networks.
Customization and Environment
Specialized businesses require specialized training. Where learning involves technical or scientific information or equipment, the environment is doubly important. Testing laboratories, for example, are specialized environments where the equipment and the way the staff uses it must comply with international standards.
Contract on-site training is customizable to laboratories or other unique locations where the work employees are learning to do takes place daily. Practicing new skills in the lab, under actual lab conditions is another benefit of on-site training.
Participation and Communication
When employees learn together, they can’t avoid communicating with one another. On-site training may include participatory exercises or hands-on demonstrations where staff can train each other, ask questions, and seek immediate clarification from trainers and colleagues alike.
Tracking and Assessment
If you send your employees offsite to a seminar or conference, how do you confirm they actually attended required sessions or assess their learning? Online learning conducted in-house or remotely typically includes tracking, assessments, and reporting. On-site live training offers the old-fashioned opportunity to take face-to-face attendance, pass around a sign-in sheet, or simply confirm who managers see and don’t see in the room.
