Let’s face it. HR is all about people work. It involves showing empathy to your employees. Celebrating their promotions and milestones. Building a healthy company culture. Attracting top talent. And helping your employees navigate life changes like their company benefits and 401k’s.

But what about the – not so exciting parts of HR? Sure, there’s dealing with complaints. And misconduct. And breaches to your good ol’ employee handbook (hopefully, none of your employees are dating the CEO). So where do HR trainings fit in on your to-do list?

While assigning HR trainings is typically a flurry of paperwork and compliance checklists you usually save for the end of the year, it doesn’t have to be an administrative pain on you and your team. Sure, you can conduct your HR trainings in-person, but what about if some of your employees are in other states or countries? Or what about navigating the various complexities and various compliance laws for states like California or New York to name a few?

And don’t get us started on the manual follow ups that each and every employee requires to make sure they finish their annual HR trainings. All in all, knocking out your annual HR training requirements could take you and your team weeks worth of time precious time. Time you could be spending on the people work part of the job.

What if there was a better way?

Enter Ethena. We were co-founded by two women who wanted to create HR trainings that actually helped workplaces. They started with sexual harassment prevention, but today, they’ve taken the company to tackle many HR trainings through a multitude of courses.

We’d like to say we’ve contributed to humanity.

The best HR training you’ll ever need

With so many options out there, however, how do you find the best one at the best price? Do you need online, in-person, or hybrid trainings? Which courses are easiest and most effective?

This is where Ethena shines. Our courses offer a new perspective on HR trainings that are engaging and contemporary, which means most employees retain the information for a longer period of time. And, in the end, isn’t that the goal?

Today, we’ll walk through what HR training is, why you need it, and more details on what makes Ethena’s courses stand out from the rest.

What is HR Training?

The term “HR Training” can encompass a lot of training options out there, ranging from broader, company-wide courses like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Harassment Prevention to courses made specifically for an HR team, like Leadership and Management or Hiring and Interviewing training.

Although it may make more sense to assume “HR training” means “training for HR professionals,” when we refer to “HR training,” we actually mean “organizational training typically administered by a Human Resources/People team.”

In other words, HR training is training that an HR team is responsible for sourcing, executing, and tracking for an organization. Depending on the size of your team, this term likely encompasses all training courses that your organization needs for its employees. Think of it as a more general “company training” term.

So, what can we expect from an HR training program?

What courses do HR training programs typically cover?

There are many reasons an organization may require training for its employees, which include, but are not limited to:

What HR training courses do you need?

If you’re an HR professional or manager on the hunt for training to support your organization, you may find the search for the perfect curriculum a bit overwhelming – there are a lot of courses out there! If you’re searching on a tight budget, this can make the window-shopping and decision-making process even more difficult.

How do you know what courses you need? Start with the legal and compliance basics: what courses does your organization need to implement in order to satisfy compliance and industry-specific requirements? If you need a good place to start, we recommend our blog post on HR Compliance Best Practices, which contains a simple checklist to help you cover all your bases.

Outside of legal requirements, you may also want to consider the values of your organization and the type of workplace environment you’d like to support. Courses like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are a great step in building better, healthier workplaces.

Why do you need HR training?

We’ve covered this a bit above, but for many organizations, HR training is tied to compliance laws that require annual training for employees. But if you’re on the fence about a certain course, or if you need some good reasons to pitch a course to the rest of your team, here are a few other things to consider:

  • Good training gives employees the resources they need to address issues when they arise.

Let’s not pretend that misconduct is never going to happen – this is more of a “when” than an “if.” By training employees on what to do when they witness misconduct in the workplace, you’re empowering your team to tackle issues head on and with the best practices in mind. This creates a speak up culture, a great byproduct of a healthy work environment.

  • Training can also protect businesses from major legal fallout.

Especially considering the recent changes with the Department of Justice (DOJ) as it relates to corporate misconduct, companies who implement a rigorous compliance training program are taken into consideration when the DOJ investigates individual corporate wrongdoing.

  • Training helps with communication, and supports stronger company culture.

The right training provider can reinforce your company values, give employees better interpersonal skills, and provide helpful information about how teams can best support one another as diverse individuals working together. As people, we learn more and more all the time about how to be a better version of ourselves, so why shouldn’t our workplace training do the same?

You’ll want to take these ideas into consideration when you begin to factor in things like budget and how much time you plan to spend training. In many ways, having effective training can save an organization a lot of time and money by preventing repeated misconduct, improving employee retention, and generally making the workplace a pleasant and more productive place to be.

Why Ethena’s HR training is the best out there

Ethena’s training platform is undeniably one of the best options out there for leaders looking for the right training. From engaging content, to an automated delivery system, to a top-tier administrative experience, HR leaders who choose to implement their HR trainings through Ethena typically find something they truly love. But don’t just take our word for it, we have over 1M positive ratings to prove it.

We’ve also achieved best in class marks from Ethisphere, who rates overall quality of compliance trainings for the HR industry.

How Ethena makes training easy

Ethena’s platform is designed with both administrators and employees in mind, making training easy to manage and complete.

HR teams implementing Ethena for their teams can utilize HRIS integrations and simple CSV uploads to get employees onboarded. From there, Ethena’s platform automatically delineates things like employee location and managerial status and delivers specific training courses to each employee designed to satisfy appropriate legal requirements. (If you have teams training in multiple states in the U.S., for example, all you need to do is assign employees to a course, and Ethena will automatically deliver state-specific training to each individual employee.)

With Deputy, an Ethena customer who needed training that worked for a growing international team, Ethena was the right training provider to support their team with training that scaled alongside them, wherever they onboarded new employees.

Employees receive training via magic links to their inboxes, bringing them directly to their training in one click. No need to onboard the entire company into a new learning management system (LMS) to train! Ethena’s courses also come with bite-sized continuous learning lessons to keep training short, convenient, and easy to complete.

Administrators with Ethena can be as hands-on or as hands-off as they like. Just assign the courses, and Ethena handles the rest. Ethena’s platform also provides summary completion and engagement data at a glance, while offering detailed information for admins who prefer to look deeper.

Why is it effective?

Ethena pairs an innovative training platform with outstanding training content, with modern references, inclusive subject-matter, and vibrant multimedia. What makes Ethena’s training content special is that it takes modern attention spans and social media feeds into mind, making training feel more like the content you’re employees are used to consuming every day.

Companies like Tegus who were looking for an inclusive Harassment Prevention training that helped support their internal DEI efforts found great success with Ethena’s training. Creating training content that goes above and beyond to support inclusive and ethical workplaces is Ethena’s bread and butter!

Plus, Ethena’s training platform makes collecting employee feedback effortless, so you’ll know exactly how engaged and happy your team is with their training. An outstanding 76% of the 66,000 employees on Ethena’s platform have provided feedback, with a 92% positivity rating. In fact, Ethena’s just passed 1 Million individual pieces of positive feedback on our training!

Ready to learn more about how Ethena can solve your HR training needs? Let’s talk, and if you’re interested, download a sample training lesson to see what all the positive feedback’s about!