Training specialized engineering staff is vital, but it can also be expensive. If you are finding that your company’s training costs are getting out of control, there are six easy ways that you can lower your expenses, without lowering the quality of the training.
1. Schedule as much group training as possible. If at all possible, group training sessions are typically less expensive and will allow you the ability to increase the team spirit and provide peer support for employees. While this is not always possible, particularly when you only have one new incoming employee, group sessions will save you money and help get everyone up to speed at the same time.
2. Streamline the training process. You can streamline your training process by examining the current material, removing redundancies and looking for what information your employees will actually be using on a daily basis. Focus on this instead of broader training that may not be actually useful for their position.
3. Offer incentives for early training completion. Paid training is nice, but some employees may be tempted to stretch that out while they complete the necessary tasks. Instead, consider offering a lower rate of pay during train, or do away with paid training entirely. Your new hires will be motivated to get through the training process quickly.
4. Find a key team member who is already experienced. Instead of hiring an outside instructor, or using someone within your organization who is needed elsewhere, find a team member who has leadership and teaching skills and ask them to help you train the others in their department. Since they know the actualities and the day to day requirements, they are uniquely appropriate for this type of training.
5. Utilize temp to perm hires more often. Contract workers who are already experienced can help you drastically reduce the amount of money you spend on training new hires. This also gives you the luxury of trying out a new person before making them a permanent employee in your organization.
6. Move to an entirely digital training format. While much of engineering training takes place on a computer or in a similar environment, there are still manuals and materials that are typically printed. By reducing your reliance on this type of training material you can save significant money, particularly over time.