Project Management: Why Training Pays Off

Build toward long-term efficiency with training investments now.

Every project starts with a plan, but even the best plans can go off course. An employee follows an outdated process, the wrong parts get ordered, or essential details don’t get communicated, and suddenly, your project has taken a wrong turn. Now, you have to backtrack, find where it went wrong, and redo it correctly. That’s rework.

Rework isn’t just annoying—it’s expensive. A 2018 research report estimated that in the construction industry alone, rework and other error-related logistics (like managing conflict and searching for project data) accounted for $177.5 billion in labor costs in the US. When something goes wrong on a project, you can face losses in time, materials, reputation, work quality, and more. All of these carry a financial impact on top of the sheer inconvenience. 

Given how costly and how common these kinds of errors are, minimizing them should be high on any organization’s priority list. Fortunately, these are exactly the kind of issues that a learning and development (L&D) strategy is designed to target. And when training is incorporated thoughtfully into your project plan, it not only prevents setbacks, it also adds significant positive value. 

Training cements a baseline set of skills.

Even the most highly skilled workforce will vary in their abilities, at least a little. Maybe some team members were certified more recently, while others are rusty—or some are new to their roles, while others have long experience. With an L&D strategy, you can level the playing field for everyone on the project team and provide a valuable refresher on relevant skills.

Project-related training is also a key opportunity to boost the skills that often go underappreciated in collaborative work. These include soft skills like communication and leadership, as well as logistical knowledge like productivity software and project planning. With these tools in their back pockets, your workforce can deliver not just top-quality work but a more efficient process than ever.

Training reinforces organizational culture.

An L&D strategy allows you to establish consistent messaging with project teams. That’s useful for ensuring everyone has the right skills, but also for setting consistent expectations inside a project team. Every time team members engage with training, you have an opportunity to emphasize critical values and processes that will make work flow more smoothly in the future. 

Walk team members through documentation processes, for example, and highlight how essential they are for long-term efficiency, or reaffirm your workplace’s commitment to safety with in-depth, project-specific courses. These kinds of materials communicate your organization’s priorities and foster an environment that minimizes the risks to your projects’ success and your organization.

Training establishes accessible resources for employees to consult.

However meticulously you plan your project, your teams will still hit the occasional snag. When a team member has a question about how Autodesk works or where archived files are kept, they could stop what they’re doing and seek out another team member to ask, or they could refer to the training materials they already have access to. A strong training strategy gives your project team important information ahead of time, but also shows them where and how to access good information for themselves.

With the right training platform, employees can quickly access bite-sized learning content that answers their questions in the moment, without disrupting the flow of work. Staying “in the zone” is a tremendous benefit to overall productivity, but it also improves the employee experience for your team members. They face fewer disruptions, and with essential knowledge close at hand, they’re empowered to take initiative and work confidently. 

Lay a strong foundation for your biggest projects with Pinnacle Series.

Eagle Point’s flagship Learning Management System is a powerful training framework, but it’s also a comprehensive knowledge platform that can transform your approach to project management. Pinnacle Series boasts a rich library of learning content from leading software providers, and with its customizable courses and adaptable content management, you can craft the perfect training strategy for any kind of project. 

You can leverage the platform’s knowledge to capture capabilities to collect, store, and share essential project information, solidifying a single source of truth for your team and fending off costly errors in communication. To learn more about how Pinnacle Series can change the way you approach project planning, schedule a demonstration today.