What Is Employee Training and Development? Definition & Examples

What Is Employee Training and Development?

Employee training and development is a strategic framework of activities designed to help workforce talent acquire new knowledge, refine existing skills, and elevate job performance. Within the L&D landscape, these two concepts serve distinct but complementary purposes:

Employee Training: A structured, formal process focused on short-term performance improvement. It equips individuals with the precise skills or knowledge required to excel in their current roles.
Employee Development: A continuous, long-term growth process centered on the future. It focuses on the broader acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that prepare employees for new career directions, leadership roles, or evolving responsibilities.

Training is a specific, actionable subset of development. While training addresses immediate performance gaps, comprehensive employee development also encompasses modalities like coaching, mentoring, experiential learning, informal learning, and self-directed study.

What Are the Benefits of Employee Training and Development?

A strong employee training and development program can benefit both organizations and their workforces, from building organizational agility to improving employee retention. Key benefits include:

Agility and innovation: Continuous learning helps organizations adapt to changing business needs. Upskilling and reskilling ensure employees have the capabilities needed to respond to evolving demands.
Strategic succession planning: L&D initiatives help organizations identify and develop high-potential talent, creating an internal pipeline of skilled employees prepared for future leadership roles.
Recruitment and retention: Professional development can attract employees and encourage them to stay. Opportunities for learning and career growth can help address a common driver of voluntary turnover: limited opportunities for advancement. Retention resources.
Increased Employee Engagement: Providing clear pathways for career growth fosters a highly engaged workforce. Employees who feel invested in are statistically more likely to stay with their employers long-term.
Risk Mitigation and Compliance: Safety and compliance training helps organizations reduce workplace injuries, legal liabilities, and other operational risks.

The Data Behind the ROI

Retention & Growth: According to LinkedIn Learning research, 93% of employees will stay at a company longer if they invest in their careers.
Internal Mobility: Organizations that prioritize internal mobility and upward progression retain their employees for twice as long as those with low mobility.

Because "learning" looks different depending on the business need, a one-size-fits-all training curriculum rarely succeeds. To build an agile, high-performing workforce, organizations must deploy a diverse mix of specialized training programs that target specific skill gaps, align with different stages of the employee lifecycle, and solve unique operational challenges.

Common Types of Employee Training Programs

Technical training develops job-specific knowledge and skills related to products, tasks, or processes.
Soft skills training develops interpersonal and professional skills such as emotional intelligence, adaptability, creativity, influence, communication, and teamwork. These are also called “power skills” or “professional life skills.”
Compliance training covers actions required by laws, regulations, or external policies and may address topics such as cybersecurity or sexual harassment.
Safety training promotes workplace health and reduces injuries. It can address employee, workplace, customer, digital, and information safety and may be required by law or provided voluntarily.
Management development builds the knowledge and skills managers need to develop talent and lead effectively, including communication, collaboration, engagement, decision making, and emotional intelligence.
Leadership development builds individual leadership skills and organizational leadership capability through activities such as training, mentoring, coaching, job rotation, and special assignments.
Executive development provides senior leaders and executives with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in their roles.
Customer service training develops the knowledge, behaviors, and strategies employees need to provide exceptional customer service.
Customer education training teaches customers how to use an organization’s products or services. Unlike service training, the audience is external customers.
Corporate training helps employees develop new knowledge and skills, improve performance, advance their careers, or address organizational skill gaps.
Onboarding equips new employees with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in their roles.
Sales enablement provides market-facing teams with relevant resources and support to improve productivity and drive business impact. It can include sales training, coaching, content creation, process improvement, and talent development.

Common Employee Training Methods

In high-performing organizations, training and development initiatives are aligned with organizational needs, the target audience, and the knowledge or skills learners need to develop. Common types of employee training and development include:

Instructor-led training is facilitated by an instructor either in person (face-to-face or classroom training) or virtually through Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT)
E-learning is a structured course or learning experience delivered electronically. It can be synchronous or asynchronous, with self-paced experiences incorporating video, text, visuals, quizzes, simulations, games, and other interactive elements.
Microlearning uses short, accessible learning resources to support learning and performance. Examples include how-to videos, e-learning, job aids, podcasts, blogs, games, and infographics.
Simulation recreates real-life situations, including through immersive technologies such as VR, to help learners understand how different actions produce different outcomes.
On-the-job training enables employees to learn while performing their work, providing training when and where it is needed rather than requiring employees to leave the workplace.
Coaching is an interactive process designed to improve individual, team, or organizational performance through listening, questioning, conversation, and action planning.
Mentoring is a collaborative relationship, often between a more experienced and less experienced employee, that supports learning, growth, and career development.

How Can Organizations Build Employee Training and Development Programs?

Building a scalable, high-impact employee training and development program requires a strategic, phased approach. Rather than guessing what learners need, organizations should follow a structured instructional design workflow to ensure their programs drive measurable business results.

Phase 1: Conduct a Training Needs Assessment (TNA)

The foundation of any successful L&D initiative is a needs assessment. During this phase, L&D professionals (often instructional designers) collect and synthesize data to evaluate the gap between the organization's current performance and its desired future state.

A thorough assessment allows you to:

Pinpoint specific skill or knowledge gaps within a team or business unit.
Identify the most effective intervention to close those gaps (which may or may not be training).
Secure early buy-in and alignment from key stakeholders.
Build trust and rapport with the target audience of learners.

Phase 2: Choose the Content Strategy (Build vs. Buy)

Depending on the scope and complexity of the project, organizations must decide whether to create custom learning solutions or leverage existing ones:

Custom Development (Build): Enlist an instructional designer or a dedicated L&D team to architect bespoke learning experiences and materials tailored precisely to your company's culture and workflows.
Off-the-Shelf Solutions (Buy): Purchase pre-made, standardized training modules from external vendors for universal topics like compliance or basic software skills.
Alternative Development Modalities: Leverage internal digital asset libraries, launch peer-to-peer learning networks, or implement "leaders-as-teachers" initiatives.

Phase 3: Determine Access and Delivery Mechanisms

Once the program is developed, the final step is establishing an intuitive deployment strategy. How employees access the training depends entirely on your target audience, the learning format, and your current technology stack. Organizations must choose the optimal mix of:

Asynchronous Learning: Self-paced digital modules housed on a Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Experience Platform (LXP).
Synchronous Learning: Live, instructor-led training (ILT) sessions, either in-person or via virtual classrooms (VILT).
Blended Learning: A hybrid approach combining digital assets with live, experiential workshops.

Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Training and Development

What is the difference between employee training and development?

Employee training is a short-term, reactive process focused on teaching specific skills for a worker's current role. Employee development is a long-term, proactive process focused on continuous growth, leadership skills, and future career progression.

Why is employee training important?

Employee training is critical because it directly impacts an organization's bottom line, innovation, and culture. The primary benefits include higher retention, increased productivity, closing skill gaps, and boosting morale.

What are the most common types of employee training?

Organizations typically leverage five core types of training to build a well-rounded workforce: onboarding and orientation, compliance training, technical training, soft skills training, and leadership and management training.

How do organizations build employee training and development programs?

Building an effective training program requires a structured, data-driven approach. Follow these five steps:1. Conduct a needs analysis, 2. Define clear objectives, 3. Design a curriculum, 4. Implement the training, and 5. Measure impact and continuously improve programs.

What training methods are most effective for employees?

The most effective training method depends on the subject matter, but modern organizations see the highest engagement using a hybrid mix of microlearning, on-the-job training, instructor-led training, and experiential learning.

Related ATD Resources

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