A fundamental responsibility of lab management is the ongoing training and development of the lab staff. The knowledge and understanding people have in the lab today will be insufficient to solve tomorrow's challenges. The knowledge and skills people have today will not be sufficient to solve tomorrow’s challenges. To help laboratories grow and adapt, managers must treat staff development as a continuous effort that requires persistence, commitment, and a clear understanding of individual strengths. Effective training programs do more than improve technical capabilities. When employees feel valued and see opportunities to grow within the organization, they are more likely to stay engaged, support the lab’s mission, and contribute high-quality work. Here are three benefits laboratories can gain by committing to ongoing staff training and development:
#1 – Increased engagement
Employee engagement is a powerful force for any organization. Highly engaged staff will contribute more discretionary ideas, produce higher quality work, have fewer safety incidents, and show higher retention. Improved employee engagement is a straightforward way to increase the lab's performance. One way to increase engagement is to provide ongoing training and development. This investment in staff addresses a core need people have—to feel valued —and one of the key returns on that investment is improved engagement.
#2 – Improved motivation
In the book Drive, Daniel Pink shows that mastery is a key component of motivation. Helping staff build mastery gives them greater confidence and skills to perform their roles in the lab. Developing mastery is about growing existing strengths and skills. Lab managers can help staff identify strengths that are important to the lab and build ongoing training and development programs to help people push their skills towards mastery. The investment in training drives increased motivation, which results in greater effort in their work, greater focus on their role, and improved productivity.
#3 – Greater flexibility
A key benefit of a robust training and development program is to build flexibility into the lab. Using cross-training to share skills and knowledge across a broader subset of teams offers alternatives when planning workloads and workflows. Having more staff proficient in the most important activities of the lab enables lab managers to deliver on urgent work, address peaks in requests, and keep people contributing during troughs in workloads for specific activities. Enhanced flexibility will also relieve pressure on peer reviewers and offer options during periods of high stress and burnout.
Actively driving a training and development program for the lab drives many benefits, and the costs of training can be quite modest. The key is to learn about your people and help them grow strengths and skills that will benefit them and the lab.
