From convenience and privacy to custom plans, on-site training offers a range of practical benefits ideally suited to helping in-house engineers develop and learn.
When booking training for your heat treatment operators, you’d be forgiven for thinking that what courses they enrolled on was your biggest priority. While it’s true that you want to choose the right courses for your operators’ needs, it’s also true that where and how that training is delivered can go a long way towards determining its impact and how it’s received.
On-site training offers several distinct advantages over remote training or training delivered off-premises. But what actually is it? How is it different from these other types of training and if you were to go ahead and book it, how would your teams benefit?
To future-proof your operations with specialist on-site training, get in touch today.
Also known as ‘on-the-job training’, on-site training is training delivered to an organisation’s employees at its site. Like other forms of training, it plays a vital role in the learning, development and engagement of an organisation’s employees, helping them to feel as though they’re growing, picking up new skills or competencies and advancing their careers.
“People want purpose and meaning from their work. They want to be known for what they're good at.” Gallup
As global analytics and advice firm Gallup identifies in its Employee Engagement Survey, development opportunities form one of the 12 elements of employee engagement. They directly impact your employees’ morale, their productivity, and how fulfilled they feel at work. The more engaged your employees feel, the better they will perform in their roles.
Due to the nature of the industry, on-site training is especially effective in manufacturing environments. But why? Read on to discover five advantages of on-site training for heat treatment operators and composite manufacturers.
Did you know we also offer training courses at our purpose-designed training facility?
1. Location, location, locationWith on-site training, employees don’t need time out of the office. They can clock back to work as soon as the training is complete and, since they’re based on group lessons, the cost for such training is significantly reduced. There’s the convenience of reduced travelling time for your employees to and from another training facility, as well as being able to make last-minute changes in regards to availability on the day and who attends the training. It can also be beneficial to have your team on-site, in case of an unforeseen emergency, meaning the training itself is easier to plan and book. Find out more about how to maximise the efficiency of your heat treatment process. |
Training delivered at your premises gives your employees the privacy they need to ask questions or discuss potentially sensitive information that they wouldn’t be able to voice in a mixed group of operators from other businesses. Perhaps a machine is notoriously temperamental, they’re unsure about a compliance issue, or they want to ask a question about parts or production in relation to a specific customer, for example.
With on-site training, confidential conversations about delicate issues can be held openly between trainees and trainers amid secure workshop sessions in complete confidence.
3. Tailored programsBecause they’re delivered to you on your premises, most on-site training workshops can be offered with a level of customisation. To create as much value as possible, a good provider will give you the ability to tailor aspects of the training process to certain degrees, as well as customise the lessons according to your in-house policies. If you’ve identified specific weaknesses across your team, or an opportunity for an individual to improve their performance, on-site training allows you to guide employees towards whichever area you’d like them to focus on for a specific time period or financial year. |
We’ve already touched on the performance-related benefits of training and personal development in ‘What is on-site training?’, above. In the process-driven, machine-heavy manufacturing space, there’s a lot to be said for on-site training that puts the company’s people first. It shows how much management recognises the vital role people still play in manufacturing today. It enables employees such as technicians and engineers to learn their way around those machines, building confidence and experience. And in an industry facing a skills shortage, it’s a fantastic way of retaining talent and building strong, lasting relationships between your company and the people your operations need to keep running.
Our commitment to training is one of our secrets to achieving perfect production. Discover the rest in this article.
5. Employees have access to training that works around their scheduleSite management is complicated enough without scheduling transportation and shift cover for off-site training, never mind the added costs that this incurs eating into your overheads. Even on a busy shift, on-site training can be scheduled around the organisation’s operations, guaranteeing employees the dedicated time they need each week/month to learn and develop without increasing risk or production being adversely affected. This is a real advantage over the usual classroom style of universities, which have specified schedules that often clash with work hours and lead to short or infrequent training (or none at all). |
At VFE, we recognise that by far the most significant advantage to on-site training is that it enables your engineers to familiarise themselves with their actual working environment.
We offer a range of on-site training courses designed to help our customers and their teams achieve precisely that. We’ll visit your site at a time and date that suits you, so there’s no need for downtime or for production to be impacted. Behind closed doors, your team will have the freedom to talk to our certified engineers about any and all aspects of the training. With hands-on experience across all makes and models of heat treatment equipment and the industry accreditations to back us up, you can trust us to help. Choose from our range of training programs or tailor them to your team’s training needs as required and watch as the people at the heart of your production grow confidently into their roles.
There’s no substitute for hands-on experience using the exact machinery, equipment, tools and materials that your teams will be working with on the job. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why manufacturers choose to invest in on-site training over remote courses or shared classroom environments, giving their operators and technicians the opportunity to face the challenges that occur within their roles in a safe, controlled setting.
To future-proof your operations under specialist supervision, get in touch with us today.