Training vs. Development: The Two Sides of Sustained Employee Growth

Want to boost productivity, retain top talent, and give your employees the tools to excel in their roles and grow with your company?

Investing in your employees' training and development is the key. 

Your top talents may seek new opportunities without proper investment in their growth. 

If you don't want this to happen to you, take charge by prioritizing employee development and training your team for success.

But what's the difference between the two?

While training focuses on equipping employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to excel in their current roles, development focuses on building the foundational skills for personal and professional growth.

So, if training is the tool to build a house, development is the blueprint for designing it. Together, they lay the foundation for achieving long-term organizational success.

If you want to unlock your team's and business's full potential, you're at the right place. Read on as we dive deeper into the intricacies of development vs. training and share proven strategies to make the most of both.

🌱 Defining training and development

Let's clear the concepts first.

Employee training is the process of equipping new hires and current employees with the required knowledge and abilities to excel in their roles and contribute to a company's success. It's a continuous process that starts from the day an employee joins your organization and lasts throughout their entire time with your organization. 

Employee development is the process of providing growth and advancement opportunities, both within the organization and as individuals. The idea is to ​​help employees acquire new skills, knowledge, and abilities that will help them succeed in their current roles and long-term careers. 

🔍 What are the similarities between training and development?

Interestingly, training and development are similar in several ways. 

• Both are ongoing processes: Training and development start and continue throughout an employee's time with a company, where they are encouraged to learn and grow to be successful personally and professionally.
• Both focus on helping employees acquire new skills and knowledge: Training and development programs enable employees to perform their jobs efficiently.
• Both can improve employee performance: Training and development aim to improve employee performance by improving specific job-related skills or providing opportunities for personal and professional growth.
• Both require an investment in resources: Any training and development initiative requires an investment of resources, such as time, money, and effort.
• Both support organizational goals: Investing in employee training and development leads to greater job satisfaction and increased engagement, ultimately driving productivity. They also enable cost savings by reducing employee turnover and providing a strategic advantage over your competitors. 
• Both require evaluation of progress: Training and development require ongoing evaluation of progress to ensure that employees are meeting the expected standards and, if not, making the necessary adjustments to ensure progress.

🙅‍♂️ 6 Key differences between training and development

The best way to differentiate between training and development is to consider the former a sprint and the latter a marathon. 

Training is a short-term focused effort with specific, concrete goals that target a particular role or job requirement. 

On the other hand, development is a long-term endeavor with open-ended and ongoing goals aimed at the overall progression of the individual. 

While training zooms in on a particular role and how to excel in it, development focuses on developing an individual's overall skills and knowledge.

Here's a closer look at some fundamental training vs. development differences.

Focus

• Training equips employees with the tools and knowledge to excel in their current roles.
• Development supports employees' long-term career growth, preparing them for future roles and responsibilities.

Involved activities

• Training activities are all about equipping employees with the skills they need to excel in their current roles. They might include immersive simulations to practice new techniques, in-person or online classes to deepen knowledge, and observing experienced colleagues on the job. 
• Development activities help employees expand their knowledge and capabilities beyond their current position. Some examples are one-on-one mentoring, rotating through different roles in the company, and attending professional development workshops and seminars.

Duration

• Training is generally short-term, focusing on an employee's immediate skills and knowledge to perform their current job. 
• Development is typically longer-term, focusing on an employee's personal and professional growth over months and even years.

Objectives

• Training objectives are concrete and measurable, like mastering a specific software.
• Development objectives often have a broader, long-term focus, such as sharpening leadership abilities.

Group vs. individual

• Training typically takes place in a group setting, like a class or seminar. (However, self-paced learning is also becoming quite common.)
• Development activities can be done in both group or one-on-one settings, depending on the nature of the activity or the individual's needs.

Job position vs. professional career

• Training is typically specific to an employee's current job and position. 
• Development activities support employees' professional growth in their current roles and for future opportunities.
  

🚀 Discover the 8 steps to competence development to build a skilled, more engaged workforce.

🏆 6 Strategic benefits of training and developing employees

Here are a few reasons why your organization needs training and development initiatives.

Faster innovation and technology adoption 

Investing in employee training and development enables employees to adopt new technologies, processes, and models quickly. 

As a result, you can get a competitive edge in a constantly evolving business world.

Plus, regular upskilling ensures your employees are current with the latest advancements, helping them drive continued innovation in products and processes.

Improved employee retention

Retention is a common talent management challenge for business leaders. 

Luckily, employee training and development keeps your top-performing employees at your company, reducing the need for costly recruitment and onboarding processes. 

Providing opportunities for growth and advancement can help boost employee engagement, satisfaction, and commitment to their roles, decreasing costly turnover.

Plus, your company will be better positioned to attract high-caliber talent.

Develops future leaders

Providing employees with training and development opportunities within the company allows you to nurture promotable talent by developing current employees into future leaders. 

For instance, you can have specialized mentorship programs to empower team members, giving them a greater sense of value and confidence in their work. 

The result? 

Employees feel independent and capable of making their own decisions related to their work.

Higher employee productivity

Providing employees with training and development opportunities makes them better at their jobs. They also encourage innovation and make employees well-versed in doing their jobs in less time.

It can be because of learning how to use a new tool to optimize their workflows and knowledge, enabling a more efficient method of achieving results.

Training and developing your people also improve their task management skills and gives them a better understanding of organizational processes and goals. 

Improved company culture

According to Chris Dyer's book The Power of Company Culture, training and development opportunities align with key elements of building a robust corporate culture. This includes: 

• Transparency — Informing employees about company-related news like finances and client feedback.
• Positivity — Accepting challenges to build on company strengths. 
• Measurement — Collecting, measuring, and analyzing information.
• Acknowledgment — Recognizing and rewarding employee work.
• Uniqueness — Promoting company USPs.
• Listening — Practicing active listening to inspiring action.
• Mistakes — Fostering a culture where employees feel comfortable learning from their mistakes.

By offering training and development programs, you create a path for continued improvement that reduces the need for employee supervision and boosts staff morale.

Builds workplace relationships

L&D can also be a bonding experience for employees.

The feedback and mentoring received during the training and development sessions allow employees to learn from each other's strengths, tackle new challenges, and leverage each other's expertise to achieve goals faster. 

Not only does this help build a well-rounded workforce, but it also improves workplace engagement.

💡 5 Best practices for implementing training and development programs

Involve employees in the program design and implementation 

Encourage employees to actively participate when you're designing and implementing training and development programs. 

Collecting employee insights will make it more likely for the programs to meet their specific needs and address the areas where they need improvement, increasing employee buy-in and engagement and leading to better outcomes.

Align with organizational goals and values

It's vital for your organization's training and development programs to align with its overall goals and values. This way, employees will have the knowledge and skills to support the organization's mission and contribute to its success while improving their knowledge and skillsets.

Provide ongoing support

Training and development aren't one-time events. 

On the contrary, they demand ongoing support, mentoring, and coaching to help employees apply what they've learned daily. 

💡 Tip: Providing ongoing support also helps reinforce learning, leading to better retention and improved performance.

Regularly review and update your L&D materials

With technology and business practices constantly evolving, it's essential to keep the resources for learning and development up to date. Make sure to: 

• Review and update training materials regularly. 
• Provide access to new technologies.
• Offer new learning opportunities to employees.

💡 Tip: We recommend conducting training needs assessments to identify employee strengths and weaknesses and create effective L&D programs that help them meet customers' needs and achieve set goals.

Measure and reiterate

Evaluate your organization's training and development programs to ensure they meet the desired outcomes—and reiterate if needed. 

You can evaluate through surveys, testing, or by tracking performance metrics. 

Based on the results, you can adjust and improve the program to ensure that you use available resources effectively and that employees achieve the desired results.

💡 Tip: Use our training evaluation form or survey to collect strategic insights. 

➡️ Train and develop your people with Zavvy

If you want a reliable and effective solution to unlock your team's potential, look no further than Zavvy.

Use Zavvy to:

• 💡 Communicate the skills and abilities essential for success in your organization and industry.
• 🚀 Create a roadmap for developing critical skills and abilities with clear, actionable steps for managers and employees to follow with our suggested development activities.
• 🎓 Run engaging training programs on autopilot. 
• 🌱 Build targeted development plans based on each employee's capabilities and interests.
• 💼 Improve the overall effectiveness of your organization and gain a more competitive edge in your market.
• 🏆 Develop a world-class team, and increase productivity and performance.
• 📊 Measure and track progress and share constructive feedback.

See how it all works in a free 30 minutes demo.