How to Build a Staff Training Plan for Your Business

By James Chen ·

Build a practical staff training plan in around 30 minutes. Identify training needs, create role-based requirements and track employee learning.

How to Build a Staff Training Plan for Your Business

A staff training plan doesn't need to be a 40-page document.

For many businesses, you can build the foundations of a useful training plan in around 30 minutes.

You need to answer five questions:

Who works here?
What do they need to know?
What training do they need?
When should it happen?
How will we know it's been completed?

Here's how to turn those answers into a practical training plan.

Step 1: Start with roles, not courses

Don't begin by browsing a training catalogue.

Start with your people.

Write down each role within the organisation:

Now think about what each role actually does.

What systems do they use?

What risks do they encounter?

Do they manage people?

Do they handle personal information?

Do they operate equipment?

Do they work with children or vulnerable people?

This gives you a much stronger foundation than simply assigning the same ten courses to everybody.

Step 2: Identify your training requirements

For each role, consider five areas.

Legal requirements

What legislation applies to your organisation and the work employees perform?

Health and safety is an obvious example. Employers have duties to provide appropriate information, instruction, training and supervision to employees.

Workplace risks

Look at your risk assessments.

If you've identified a risk that relies partly on employees knowing how to work safely, ask whether training is required.

Sector requirements

Some organisations operate within sectors with additional regulatory or professional expectations.

Healthcare, social care, schools and childcare are good examples.

MoreCPD has dedicated training information for GP Practices, Care Providers, Schools and Nurseries & Childcare.

Company requirements

What does your organisation require employees to understand?

This might include:

Development needs

Training doesn't have to be purely about compliance.

Employees may also benefit from:

A good training plan supports both compliance and capability.

Step 3: Separate “must have” from “nice to have”

You've now got a list of possible training.

Don't assign all of it.

Split it into three groups.

Essential

Training required before or shortly after somebody starts performing their role.

Important

Training that should be completed within an appropriate timeframe but isn't necessarily needed on Day One.

Development

Learning that helps employees grow their skills and effectiveness.

For example:

TrainingPriorityWorkplace Health & SafetyEssentialFire ProceduresEssentialData ProtectionEssentialCyber SecurityImportantCommunication SkillsDevelopmentManaging Difficult ConversationsDevelopment

This stops new employees being overwhelmed with a wall of courses on their first day.

Step 4: Decide who needs what

Now create a simple role-based matrix.

For example:

CourseAdminManagerWarehouseHealth & Safety✓✓✓Fire Safety✓✓✓Data Protection✓✓—Manual Handling——✓COSHH——✓Managing People—✓—

This immediately gives you a basic staff training matrix.

When a new warehouse employee joins, you already know which training should be considered for their role.

We've created a separate guide explaining How to Create a Staff Training Matrix.

Step 5: Choose how the training should be delivered

Not every requirement needs a classroom course.

And not everything should be e-learning.

Ask what employees actually need to achieve.

If the objective is primarily knowledge or awareness, online learning may be appropriate.

If somebody needs to demonstrate a practical skill, practical instruction or competency assessment may be required.

If the subject benefits heavily from discussion and interaction, instructor-led training may be more appropriate.

Sometimes the answer is a combination.

We've explored this further in Online Training vs Face-to-Face Training.

Step 6: Give every requirement a timeframe

Training without a deadline tends to become:

“We'll get around to it.”

Decide when each requirement should be completed.

For example:

Day One
Emergency procedures and immediate workplace risks.

First Week
Core compliance and organisational training.

First Month
Wider role-specific learning.

First Three Months
Development and additional competency requirements.

Our New Employee Training Guide provides a practical induction structure.

Step 7: Decide what needs refreshing

Don't automatically make every course annual.

Different training requirements may have different renewal or review periods.

Consider:

You may also need additional training before the planned renewal date if circumstances change.

Read our guide to How Often Mandatory Training Should Be Refreshed.

Step 8: Decide how you'll track everything

Your training plan now needs to become something you can manage.

At minimum, you want to know:

Required → Assigned → Completed → Evidence → Renewal

For a small business, this could be a spreadsheet.

As the organisation grows, maintaining it manually becomes increasingly difficult.

An Employee Training Platform can centralise course assignments, progress and certificates instead.

Step 9: Give somebody ownership

Every training plan needs an owner.

Without one, even a good system gradually becomes outdated.

Someone should be responsible for:

It doesn't necessarily need to be their full-time job.

It just needs to be somebody's job.

Step 10: Review, don't rebuild

Your training plan shouldn't be something you create once and forget about.

Review it when:

You can also schedule a periodic overall review to make sure the plan still reflects how the organisation actually operates.

Build your training plan in 30 minutes

If you're starting from nothing, try this:

Minutes 0–5

Write down every job role.

Minutes 5–10

Identify legal, regulatory and workplace requirements.

Minutes 10–15

Identify training required for each role.

Minutes 15–20

Separate essential, important and development training.

Minutes 20–25

Set completion and review periods.

Minutes 25–30

Decide how you'll record and monitor everything.

You won't have a perfect training strategy after half an hour.

But you'll have something far more useful:

a structure.

You can improve it from there.

A simple staff training plan template

Your final plan might look like this:

Role

Training

Priority

Delivery

Complete by

Review

All staff

Health & Safety

Essential

Online + workplace induction

Week 1

As required

All staff

Data Protection

Essential

Online

Week 1

Periodically

Warehouse staff

Manual Handling

Essential

Appropriate practical training

Before undertaking activity

Risk-based

Managers

Managing People

Development

Online or workshop

Within 3 months

At development review

That's enough to start managing training much more deliberately.

Put the plan into practice

Creating the plan is the easy part.

The harder part is keeping track of it as employees join, leave, complete courses and require refresher training.

MoreCPD combines Online Staff Training with a learning platform that allows organisations to assign courses, monitor progress and manage employee training records centrally.

For businesses managing wider compliance requirements, explore our Online Compliance Training options.

Explore MoreCPD Staff Training Plans →

Your Staff Training Plan Checklist

Before you're finished, check:

☐ Every job role has been identified
☐ Training requirements have been considered by role
☐ Legal and sector requirements have been considered
☐ Workplace risks have been considered
☐ Essential and development training are separated
☐ Appropriate delivery methods have been chosen
☐ Completion timescales are defined
☐ Refresher requirements are considered
☐ Training can be tracked
☐ Someone owns the process
☐ The plan will be reviewed periodically

If you can tick all eleven, you've got the foundations of a useful staff training plan.