In an ever-changing business environment, employee skills development has become a strategic issue for companies. The training plan, now known as the skills development plan, is no longer a mere HR formality: it's an essential lever for boosting performance, stimulating commitment and retaining talent. But how do you build a truly effective training plan?
Here are the key steps to follow to design a solid, relevant training strategy aligned with your company's needs.
1. Identify skills needs
It all starts with the needs gathering phase, based on active listening to the field and cross-referencing several sources of information:
The organization's strategy
Analyzing strategic orientations enables us to anticipate tomorrow's skills requirements:
- Launch of new projects,
- Organizational or digital transformations,
- Market, business or regulatory developments.
Skills available within the organization
The assessment of current skills can be based on various tools:
- Professional interviews between employees and managers,
- Individual skills assessments,
- Annual appraisals and managerial feedback,
- Skills mapping from HR management systems.
Legal and regulatory obligations
Some skills are required by law or standards:
- Safety regulations (e.g. electrical, SST).
- Industry-specific compliance standards.
- Mandatory certifications (e.g. RGPD, CACES, etc.).
Once skills requirements have been identified, they need to be analyzed and prioritized in order to focus training efforts on the most strategic and urgent issues.
2. Prioritize and structure training initiatives
Not all identified needs can be met, so it's essential to prioritize and structure training initiatives to optimize resources and maximize impact. It is therefore essential to prioritize and structure training actions in order to optimize resources and maximize impact.Here are the key steps to follow to design a solid, relevant training strategy aligned with the company's needs.
This involves :
- Prioritize needs according to urgency, expected strategic impact, legal obligations and available budget.
- Categorize actions: mandatory training, technical, soft skills, managerial, etc...
- Think in terms of development paths rather than one-off actions, to strengthen skills development over time.
3. Choosing the right training formats
Choosing the right training format is a key step in designing an effective training program. Whether face-to-face, e-learning, blended learning, tutoring or even virtual classes, the range of modalities has greatly diversified, offering invaluable flexibility to adapt to the specific needs of each context.
The choice of format should never be arbitrary, and depends above all on :
- The characteristics of the target audience (level of autonomy, familiarity with digital technology, availability),
- The educational objectives (acquisition of knowledge, development of practical skills, behavioral change),
- The corporate culture (training habits, budget, work organization).
The right format encourages commitment, knowledge retention and practical application.
Thinking in terms of the “learner experience” is fundamental: training designed to be accessible, motivating and useful significantly increases the chances of it not only being followed, but also applied in the field.
4. Steering and monitoring the training plan
Once the training initiatives have been rolled out, it's not enough to simply check that everything has gone according to plan. You need to set up a monitoring system, combining:
- Quantitative indicators - such as the number of sessions held, participation rates and budget compliance
- Qualitative data based on feedback from trainees, trainers and managers.
This collection of information enables us to measure satisfaction, the relevance of content, and above all, the actual increase in employee skills.
Good follow-up also includes medium-term evaluation, to measure the impact of training on operational performance, motivation at work, initiative-taking and talent retention.
This overall monitoring must be closely linked to the company's strategic objectives, to ensure that training investments actually contribute to creating value. So it's not just an administrative exercise, but a real lever for performance and commitment, to be managed over the long term.
5. Capitalize, evaluate and adjust
By its very nature, a training plan is an evolving process: it must constantly adapt to feedback from the field, new corporate priorities and external changes.
At the end of each cycle - whether quarterly, half-yearly or annual - it's essential to take a step back: identify what went well, pinpoint sticking points, analyze the quality of the training delivered, assess the suitability of the formats used and the performance of the service providers.
This assessment enables us to adjust content and teaching methods, or even rethink certain actions to better meet employees' real needs.
We must also take into account changes in the business environment, whether technological (new tools, emerging professions), legislative (training reform) or strategic (reorientation of company priorities).
This process of continuous improvement encourages learning and enables us to build, cycle after cycle, an ever more effective and relevant system.
In a nutshell...
An effective training plan is more than just a list of pedagogical actions. It is based on a structured, agile approach aligned with the company's ambitions. It becomes a real lever for performance, adaptation and attractiveness, at the service of employees and global strategy.
Is your training plan ready to meet tomorrow's challenges?
Optimize your training strategy today: request your demo!
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