Set up employment policies for your business

Having a training policy in place will enable you to plug any skills shortages in your workplace. This is beneficial to employees and will also have a positive impact on business performance.

A training policy can be implemented to allow employees to perform their current role more effectively or support them through a change in role.

You should ensure that your training policy is appropriate. This can be achieved by assessing whether it fits with your business plan and through discussions with employees, eg you may decide to offer training in-house for specific tasks, general company guidance for new starters, or refresher training for existing employees. Develop a staff training plan.

Performance management

Implementing an appraisal system is another way of improving your business performance. It represents a good opportunity to discuss with individual employees both their strengths and weaknesses, areas for development, and agree on new aims and objectives with them.

Businesses commonly carry out appraisals within a few months of a new employee starting or changing role within the business. For established employees, you may decide to use the appraisal system once or twice per year.

Some of the benefits of having appraisal-related performance targets are that employees understand what is expected of them and how these fit into the wider aims of the business. Targets are also a way of gaining useful feedback and ideas on how your business can be more effective in the future. Read more on managing staff performance.

To access templates that you can download, tailor and use, see performance management and staff training templates.