When Prioritizing HR Training, Why is Awareness Training the Least Important?

When Prioritizing HR Training, Why is Awareness Training the Least Important?

When it comes to HR training, there are different types of trainings that organizations offer to their employees. These include onboarding, technical training, compliance training, and leadership training. However, awareness training is usually the least important of them all. This article explores why awareness training takes a back seat and why other types of training are more critical.

What is Awareness Training?

Awareness training is a type of training that focuses on alerting individuals to the existence and consequences of specific behaviors or situations. The training aims to inform employees about topics such as sexual harassment, cultural sensitivity, diversity, and inclusion. It is usually short and takes anywhere between an hour to a few days.

Why is it the Least Important?

While awareness training is essential, it is the least significant of all the training types. This is because awareness training is more about increasing knowledge but less about skill-building. HR training should aim to develop employees’ skills to enable them to handle tasks efficiently, which is not the case with awareness training.

Moreover, awareness training is often seen as an HR tick-box exercise by employees. Participants may feel they are going through the motions, rather than truly understanding the underlying problems. In some cases, awareness training may even be viewed as creating division amongst employees and enforce feelings of resentment. As a result, companies can fail to see the necessary ongoing systemic change that needs to occur.

Why are Other Training Types More Critical?

The other types of training, like leadership, compliance, and technical training, are usually more critical because they help employees acquire the skills they need to be successful in their roles. Compliance training helps to ensure that an employee understands laws and regulations that enable the company to operate ethically and legally, which is essential for a company’s integrity.

In comparison, technical training helps employees to improve their job skills. Employees can learn new software, systems, IT, or operational knowledge, providing them with the necessary skills to competently perform their roles. Leadership training helps to develop leadership competencies and empower management to set the tone and increase accountability amongst employees.

Conclusion

Awareness training is essential for creating inclusive and welcoming workplace environments. However, it is not the most important type of HR training. Therefore, HR departments need to ensure that they prioritize the training that will help their organization succeed and achieve its goals. Though all types have their place, they provide differing levels of value, with HR professionals needing to select the appropriate kind based on the company’s unique requirements.