How Your Company Can Benefit From Management Training Programs

Company training programs are more than just an onboarding, orientation platform for newly hired employees or as development for entry-level employees. Expanding the purpose and objectives of creating and hosting management training can provide many benefits for your company – even for employees who have been with your organization for some time.

More and more organizations are doing just that and are implementing managerial training programs for their managers and existing employees to improve and expand their skillsets, or as a refresher course to help reinforce existing practices.

Improving Sales & Productivity

According to a Feb. 3, 2020 study by Nicola Bianchi and Michela Giorcelli published in KelloggInsight, management training increased sales and productivity. Here are some of the findings from their research:

• HR training increased annual sales by 5.5% and productivity by 4.6%.
• Inventory training bumped up annual sales by 3.3% and productivity by 3.8%.
• Factory-operations training improved annual sales by 2.5% and productivity by 2.2%.

And when you combined one or more of these training programs, these numbers improved even more.

A few other important insights that the researchers identified were:

1. Middle managers who are closely engaged and familiar with front-line employees were able to make greater use of incentive-based changes than upper management.

2. Upper management was more effective than mid management at leveraging training related to inventory management, as they are more familiar with strategies and cross-departmental goals and planning.

Simply put, additional training of managers can directly lead to a higher level of sales and productivity for an organization. Even more, it can help improve time-management capabilities.

A key aspect of managing is determining how much time to allocate between completing one’s own individual tasks, as well as working with and leading a team, and each person within the team. Training about time-planning skills or about how to use software and business applications to help maximize time can ensure that a business is working cohesively and efficiently.

Another useful skill that can be taught to help establish employee autonomy and empowerment is critical thinking and problem solving. In addition, corporate mindfulness training in the workplace has taken hold across the business world over the last few years, as many companies are now providing various forms of mindfulness such as meditation, yoga, or visualization exercises.

Training programs can be instituted to help managers and employees improve their understanding of various disciplines related to the company specific business. For example, APR Supply’s Leadership Development Program provides training related to on-the-job scenarios covering areas such as supply chain management, logistics, sales and marketing, and information technology. The more a manager understands about the business, the better he or she can function and lead employees. One aspect to not lose sight off: management training should fit and align with a company’s overall strategy, purpose, and culture.

Improving Management Communications & Employee Morale

Being an effective communicator might just be the most important trait of being a good business manager. To get the most out of a team, a good manager learns how to communicate teaching and instructing, while also sharing constructive feedback as needed. Striking this balance is essential to maximize productivity while keeping morale in place. In fact, employee morale is often a reflection of their manager. Generally, if you review a team’s overall motivation, cohesiveness, and togetherness, along with its overall productivity, you can often tell whether the manager is doing an effective job of leading them or not.

But this point about morale goes even deeper. Employees who are unhappy can become so unhappy that it can, in some cases, lead to health issues which can potentially lead to time off the job or some instances even burnout. Employees remaining unsatisfied with the workplace may decide the best course of action for them is to leave the company. And as we know, the time, resources and costs associated with recruiting new employees and training them can be quite expensive. Even more, as employees are now becoming accustomed to working remote, many are putting great emphasis on work/life balance and that means truly enjoying their eight-hour workday experience. Being proactive with management training can help ensure a positive and productive manager/employee engagement takes place before any issues arise.

Having a trained manager is beneficial in how they interact and lead people on a daily basis. While training can be beneficial for people just about to become a manager, it can also improve the skills of managers who have been leading people for many years. As overall business practices change over time, or as a company progresses or modifies its goals and objectives, it’s also essential that an organizations’ management team be kept up to date with best practices and supervisory methods. There are many forms of training that can occur such as simulation, group discussion, or role playing, but whichever is chosen, the key is to keep training as an essential part of your company’s business strategy.

As management training programs can provide a refresher for existing employees, they can also be extremely useful for new hires who are about to join the company as a manager. One example of a company that has this in place is the Granite Group, which provides training in various business areas for those joining for a sales and management position.

Coming from the outside into a new company can be overwhelming, especially for those hired for management positions who are expected to take control early on. So hosting training can be an effective way to ease them in with the group and transition them forward to give them a confidence boost heading into their new position.

The bottom line is this: making an investment in management training goes above and beyond what we have traditionally thought it included. Providing training for executives, managers and employees should be an ongoing priority for companies with the understanding that for a small investment in training, the results can very well lead to greater sales, productivity, and success.