9 Powerful Training Plan Templates and Examples for Your Business

Your company can get ahead of labor shortages and the ever-evolving skills requirements of the market by investing in employee development.

Training your workers will help you resolve common workplace issues like lack of motivation, poor productivity, inadequate domain knowledge, and confusion or uncertainty about their role.

But if it's your first time designing and executing a structured training program, you might need guidance on how to begin or what to include in your plan.

We've put together some of the best employee training templates. Use them as a starting point when building robust training programs for your organization.

9 examples of employee training templates

We've put together these ready-to-use training templates and checklists that you can customize to suit your company's learning and development needs.

1. Training needs assessment template

What this training needs assessment template includes: This training survey helps you uncover insights about gaps in employee performance, knowledge, and skills. It tells you what your workers want to learn, their preferred learning methods, and their goals. Additionally, the template also includes a version for managers, so you can compile strategic insights on team needs and business objectives.

When to use this template: Use it to assess your organization's training needs and know where the skill gaps are for each department and individual employee before you begin planning a training program.

Why it matters: This information will enable you to identify your business case for training and design targeted learning and development experiences that produce better outcomes for you and your workforce.

2. New hire onboarding checklist template

What this onboarding checklist includes: You'll find all the logistical items, preboarding activities, and action plans you will need to manage to guide new hires through your onboarding and training process from the moment they accept your job offer to their first annual performance check-in.

It contains essential knowledge, training, and skills that you want to equip new hires with, such as:

• Company policies
• Role descriptions
• Starter projects
• Chain of command
• Standard operating procedures
• Orientation, integration, and performance review timelines

When to use it: Start ticking off items from your checklist to prepare your new hire for their first day and acclimate them to their new role, team, and company in the early months.

Why it matters: The strength of your new hire training will determine:

1. The employee's experience with your company
2. Their speed to productivity
3. How well they perform in their role

A checklist keeps things from falling through the cracks, guaranteeing all new hires a uniform onboarding and training experience.

3. Training checklist template

What this training checklist template includes: This template breaks down the materials, schedules, tools, tasks, and activities you'll need to create, arrange, track, and execute to conduct a training session/program successfully.

When to use it: Create a training curriculum, prepare a memorandum, invite instructors and trainees, get feedback from participants, and disaster-proof upcoming training schemes by working through the checklist.

Why it matters: The last thing you want is to pour your time and energy into planning a training only to realize on launch day that you forgot essential elements.

You want to ensure that you remembered to:

• Book a conference room (for in-person training events)
• Send out email invites to participants (for e-learning programs)
• Print out enough assessment forms or sent invitations to online surveys

4. Individual employee training plan template

What this employee training plan includes: This template gives you an overview of where a specific employee currently is regarding skills and performance and where they need to be. It details the following:

• Employees' skill gap
• Training goals
• Development actions
• Training methods and materials
• Learning outcomes
• Progress metrics
• Training timeline

When to use it: Use this template to sharpen an employee's existing skills or prepare them to transition into a different role. Or as a component of your performance review process to support staffers who seem to lag behind before their performance becomes a severe issue.

Why it matters: A proactive training approach boosts employee productivity and efficiency by pinpointing the skills they are lacking and helping them develop those areas.

Tip: Sit down with the employee who needs the training and work with them to develop their training plan.

5. Training program template

What this employee training program template includes: This template helps you plan, track, and evaluate employee training with ease, saving you time while boosting efficiency and effectiveness in talent development. It covers five stages of training—from identifying training needs to collecting feedback and following up on any shortcomings.

When to use it: Use this template as you start planning a new larger scale training initiative in your organization. The template will guide you through the planning process with key steps such as defining the purpose of the training program, defining the target audience, and success metrics.

Why it matters: A strategic training program will align training objectives and activities with the overarching business goals. of your organization and provide clear objectives and success indicators.

6. Training matrix template

What the training matrix template includes: This template supplies all the data you'll need to get a comprehensive view of the state of your training initiatives, such as:

• Active training courses and topics
• Learner progress
• Course completion rate
• Failure rate

When to use it: Keep track of specialized and company-wide past and present training efforts and the individual employees or teams that have participated in them with this template.

Why it matters: Building a training matrix is a great way to monitor your active training programs, how trainees progress through the program, and the training needs you should be working towards meeting.

7. Training evaluation template

What this training evaluation template includes: This template includes two versions for collecting feedback tailored to both in-person and e-learning training courses and programs. It includes questions such as:

• How relevant was the training content to your job role?
• How would you rate the quality of the training materials (slides, handouts, exercises)?
• Would you recommend this training to colleagues? Why (not)?
• What topics or sections need improvement?

When to use it: A training evaluation assesses how well a training program meets its learning objectives and contributes to skill development. Use this template to collect learner insights post-training initiatives.

Why it matters: Learning feedback is vital for measuring the success of your training initiatives and making data-driven improvements. Whether you’re running corporate workshops, compliance training, leadership programs, or online courses, this template will help you evaluate training impact effectively.

8. Employee development plan template

What the employee development plan template includes: This template acts as a guide for documenting and nurturing each employee's professional growth plans. It covers:

• Their development goals
• The skills and knowledge they need to reach their goals
• The training and actions they will take to gain these skills
• The timeline for completing the training and hitting milestones

When to use it: Create development plans to:

1. Speed up time to productivity for new hires as part of the onboarding
2. Improve performance of underperforming employees
3. Help members of your team grow their skills and advance their careers, whether that means progressing toward a management role or making a lateral move.

Why it matters: Hiring new employees, especially at a higher skill tier, is far more costly and time-consuming than providing upskilling and career development opportunities for your current employees.

9. Leadership development plan template

What the leadership development plan includes: Get an overview of your company's current leadership abilities and the areas where there's room for improvement. This template addresses the following:

• Top strengths and areas of improvement from past feedback
• Top competencies required for the new role
• Development goals
• The training methods and formats to enable growth
• Training budget
• Timeline and follow-up
• Performance metrics and evaluation

When to use it: Use this plan to guide the development of those that want to take over leadership responsibilities. Provide them with leadership training to develop and improve the skills they'll require to manage a team effectively.

Why it matters: Leaders are crucial for team performance and engagement. Leaders that know how to manage and empower their teams are critical to any organization's success.

Must-haves in an employee training plan template

There are different kinds of training opportunities that you can offer your employees. And templates tend to come in different shapes, forms, and structures because they are made by people with varying organizational needs and goals.

However, whether you're creating your own or building upon someone else's, here are some essential elements that any good training policy template should have.

Training objectives 

List out how you hope the training program will benefit your workforce and company. Your goals must be specific, measurable, and relevant. Learn more about soft skills and hard skills. Employee training assessment can also be helpful to understand your employees needs.

Type or method of training

How do you intend to deliver the training? Will it be instructor-led, self-paced, virtual, in-person, or blended training? Or maybe you want to use a role-playing, virtual training, gamification, on-the-job training and mentoring approach? Think about your options and note them down in this section.

Training curriculum and materials

This column in your training plan template should cover what employees will learn during the training. Mention the learning resources and materials you'll need or provide and any regulatory guidelines that employees and course creators must follow. 

Audience and stakeholders

This template section is for defining who needs the training, who will be creating courses, conducting, or overseeing the training, and the expectations for each of the roles. 

Learning outcomes 

What specific knowledge, skills, or competencies do you want employees to take away from the training?

We recommend first filling a skills matrix, to understand your people's current skills levels and identify any gaps.

For instance, your marketing team has a training objective to improve their social media advertising skills. The learning outcome you should see after training is a strong understanding of Facebook Ads.

Timelines

What is the duration of the training program? What dates and times will training sessions take place? What are the deadlines for completing performance milestones? When will you check in with employees to see how they are progressing?

KPIs for effectiveness

Finally, every training plan template must have a field where you can define how you will measure the effectiveness of your training efforts. 

Tip: Define the KPIs or metrics you will use as a benchmark.

Plan your training with Deel Engage

Training plan templates can be a helpful guide for standardizing your training initiatives and mapping out how you will empower your workforce with the skills they need to grow and perform better.

But to build sustainable and scalable training initiatives, you also need the right training tool.

Deel Engage's training solutions are ideal from onboarding onwards to create a continuous learning culture for your company. Our solutions makes it easier to:

1. Plan, create, distribute, and manage your learning and development content in one place
2. Automate your training programs to reach people with the right content at the right time
3. Deliver effective and engaging learning courses, using formats such as microlearning, peer learning, and learning in the flow of work
4. Accelerate learning content creation with the embedded AI assistant
5. Track course completion, engagement, learner performance, and training ROI
6. Link training to career progression and competency models

Ready to build an engaging and effective training program? Book a free demo with our consultants.