Hi, GO-HR friends and clients.
I’ve been hearing from many of your that your PPP loans are starting to come in. Congratulations and I sincerely hope if it easing some of your understandable anxiety.
One of the biggest frustrations I hear from many of you is that you’ll be keeping people on payroll but you don’t have full-time work to keep them busy. This is a great time to train your employees and invest in them so they’re (and you) are ready to go when things return to “normal.” (What is normal, really?) Here are some low-cost and no-cost options. Work with your managers and supervisors to develop plans for each employee based on their current jobs in your organization, as well as potential opportunities. As the owner of the business, you can write plans for your direct reports. Your managers should be writing the plans for their direct reports. Writing the plans alone can be a great development opportunity for your managers and supervisors. Share the heavy lifting. Of course, we would be happy to help you with plans, too!
Below are just a few ideas:
If you have an insurance benefit, check to see if it comes with an EAP. Many EAP programs have web-based learning in a variety of areas. An EAP program may be a nominal add-on cost to your existing healthcare benefit, or it may be no additional cost. Talk to your insurance agent for more information.
If you don’t have a health insurance benefit, or your plan does not have an EAP, reach out to Nikki (CC’d above) and she can give you information on the very affordable GO-EAP program we have available. Several of our clients already participate in this benefit and our program has 17 web-based courses (each about 25 minutes) that produce certificates of completion for employee files. Topics include harassment avoidance (this should be an annual training), drug-free workplace, emotional intelligence, and more.
As I just mentioned, your employees should complete a harassment avoidance training annually (best practice). Here is a link to trainings you can purchase online, or you can even require employees to view this video. The challenge with this video is that it is very general, so the reporting process and policy is not specific to your organization. However, I believe this is better than no training at all. I would strongly suggest that you clearly communicate YOUR complaint and investigation processes to employees so they understand your processes and expectations.
Check out Fred Pryor. They’re offering a lot of discounts on their training passports (called Pryor +) and on individual web-based courses. Who doesn’t need Excel training? Or Project Management training?
One of the areas we neglect the most when it comes to employee development is training our managers and supervisors. Use this time now to provide reasonable suspicion training for your managers and supervisors. Not sure why you need this? Call me and we’ll talk. IN the meantime, here is a link to reasonable suspicion training for non-DOT organizations. Are you a DOT-compliant organization, then check out this reasonable suspicion training, instead.
Both Columbus Metropolitan Library and Westerville Library (and I’m sure others) offer card holders free access to LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com learning). The courses on this site are vast and varied.
Are you an Office 365 user? Check out this link. Special note: With remote working and a critical need to keep your employee connected, the Microsoft Teams training could be doubly helpful!
If you’re a G-Suite user, then check out “Learn by Product” at this link.
Need safety training? Here is one option. Your safety coordinator can access this handy resource and create learning opportunities. Check it out with a free trial with hometown-based Safex and then go from there!
The Ohio BWC also has a selection of online trainings you can access as a BWC client. Check out the courses here.
Your industry trade association also likely has a variety of courses you can tap into. Reach out to them!
Finally, if you want to go big, check out massive open online courses (MOOCs). You can learn about options here or here or here or here. A lot of these courses are no-cost and low-cost.
How often do we get financial support to train our employees? Your opportunity is NOW.
As always, we’re here to help.
Sharon DeLay, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPCC
GO-HR (a dba of BoldlyGO Career and HR Management, LLC)
[O] 614-473-0122 ▪ [C] 614-233-1522
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