5 Refresher Courses Your Employees Need to Take
In the workplace, learning something once isn’t always good enough. In order to ensure your A players stay on top of their game, your organization must provide continuous learning opportunities. As an HR leader, your duty is to ensure all employees — including your own HR staff members — have access to such opportunities.
Not sure where to start? Here are five areas where your employees could likely use a refresher course or two:
1. Workplace Safety
You don’t need a harsh work environment for workplace safety to be a concern. The category of “workplace safety” covers everything from parking lot protocol and extreme weather drills to cybersecurity, plus any industry- or department-relevant safety concerns. In 2016, there were approximately 2.9 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses — so, yes, your employees are at risk.
Workplace safety courses help to reduce not only instances of workplace injury, but also company liability. Giving your employees some refresher courses in this arena is a win for everyone.
To get started, consider checking out the National Safety Council, a nonprofit organization “with the mission of eliminating preventable deaths at work, in homes and communities, and on the road.”
2. Hostile Work Environments
As an HR leader, it is your duty to ensure that employees adhere to the procedures and protocols designed to foster a respectful and safe workplace. Combatting harassment starts with training your employees well.
When you take the time to properly train your team, you reduce liability while promoting a safe, comfortable, and enjoyable environment for your employees. For various courses related to preventing hostile work environments, check out:
– the Office of Justice Programs for education on the rights of employees and stakeholders;
– the Department of Health and Human Services for information on employee privacy and security protections, including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations; and
– compliance software providers NAVEX for courses on spotting and limiting workplace harassment.
3. Customer Service
Not every employees interacts directly with customers, but they can all benefit from customer service training. The ability to handle every interaction with grace and integrity is essential to the success of both your business and every individual employee on your team. Check out Alison for relevant courses in this area.
HR-Specific Refreshers
The following subjects may be relevant outside of HR, but they are especially important for today’s human resources professionals.
4. Data Analytics
If you’re in HR, hiring and recruiting are most likely your responsibility in some capacity. What better way to make your job a little easier than by having an understanding of analytics and related tools that can help you find higher-quality hires in less time?
If you don’t already have an analytics system in place, you may want to include in your learning an assessment of all the options available and how they might work for your organization. The information gleaned from such training can be invaluable when it comes to getting additional budget to fund new analytics initiatives and adopt new software.
Since analytics technology is constantly evolving, we recommend offering refresher courses yearly instead of quarterly. Online educational institutions like edX and Udemy offer many relevant courses in analytics. You may also want to check out Stanford Engineering Everywhere, an online learning initiative offering courses in computer science and artificial intelligence for free. Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative provides a similar service.
5. Technology Trends
New HR technologies can revolutionize how your team gets work done. In order to get the most out of your systems, your team needs to stay up to date on the latest trends and developments in the industry.
For some of the latest insights into specific HR technologies, take a look at Lynda.com or Coursera, which both offer courses on HR technology. Additionally, industry associations like SHRM, HRCI, and HCI also offer relevant courses in this field.
A version of this article originally appeared on the ClearCompany blog.
Sara Pollock is head of the marketing department at ClearCompany.