Training Categories

14 October 2025

It can be easier to think about training if it is grouped into categories. This can help business to more clearly identify their priorities. Training falls into one of four categories: Onboarding, Regulatory/Compliance, Job-Specific, and Personal/Professional.

Onboarding

This training is a welcome to both the larger organization and the team a new or transferring employee is joining. This starts from the time you make a job posting for an open position, continues through interviewing and offering a role, into acceptance and the first few days, weeks, or months of learning how to perform the role.

Clear, concise, accurate, and timely information during these first steps can make all the difference to retention. If retention is one of your issues, this is a great place to look at making improvements.

Regulatory/Compliance

No matter what business you are in or how small you are, there is likely at least some form of regulatory training that is either required or recommended to reduce risk or liability. If you are not certain what regulations apply to you, it is a good time to connect with professional societies, the chamber of commerce, or a training professional. Not having required training is a liability, and you will likely want to start making improvements here. Here are a few of the acronyms that may govern a part of your business:

EEOC, FSLA, HIPAA, SEC, OSHA, GDPR, CMS, FMLA, EPA, DOT

Job/Task-Specific

This is where you set expectations on how to perform the role or tasks within the role. This is different for each position, but an important part of this type of training is that there is a way to measure that the employee is meeting the expectation.

Creating observable and measurable expectations is important in this space. My common example is this:

The owner or manager says, "I need the new person to answer the phone".

And so they do. By saying, "Ya, what do you want?"

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