Here's How Going Cheap on Employee Training Is Costing You Salary isn't the only thing that will keep your employees from leaving.
By Dan Steiner Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
When your business adds a new employee, one of the first steps is to provide work-specific training. This may be something as simple as acclimating the person to the policies and procedures unique to your organization or as complex as learning the set of tasks necessary to operate equipment or software.
However, long after an employee has begun work, your business needs to invest in occasional training. If professionals can gain career traction through taking a particular course or getting certified in a certain area, your business stands to gain by signing them up for training. It's important to offer these opportunities equally, across all departments, constantly looking for ways to help each employee improve and advance. Here are a few ways employee training can boost your business's bottom line.
Related: How Investing In Employee Training Benefits Your Business
Training improves retention.
When any employee leaves, you have the not-so-desirable task of recruiting, interviewing and onboarding a replacement worker. You may think that the primary reason employees leave surrounds salary, but in actuality, the motivation for changing jobs goes much deeper. Many times they're looking more intently at the future career potential of a new position than the salary.
For that reason, even an occasional course might make the difference between an employee leaving and staying. Many businesses fear that if they send employees to a type of training that will improve their credentials, those employees will simply leverage what they've learned and find a better position elsewhere. In fact, that's proven not to be the case. Even if each course or certification costs your business thousands of dollars, that amount can quickly be recouped in replacement hiring costs if an employee stays rather than leaves.
Training shows career investment.
As businesses try to create a work culture that attracts top talent and keeps them on staff, they're beginning to see the many benefits of investing in a person's career rather than merely waiting for the results of their daily work output. Businesses that take an interest in whether or not each employee has job satisfaction are more likely to keep those employees. This means learning what each employee's career aspirations are and doing whatever it takes to help.
Related: Will Training Help Improve Employee Performance?
Training can be a large part of that investment. By first understanding each worker's long-term goals, you can create customized training plans that help them get from their current positions to where they want to go. You don't have to send every employee offsite for third-party training, either. You can create branded training sessions and host them via webinar, record the results and offer past classes as part of a training library on your company intranet. This will let you provide consistent training to everyone on your team, whether they're in the office or working from home.
Training creates higher-skilled employees.
When businesses go through economic slumps, sometimes training is the only thing they can offer to help their employees. While pay raises are always appreciated, employees have actually listed many other factors as more important. Appreciation for the hard work they do actually ranks at the top of that list, demonstrating the full value of caring about your workers. In a highly competitive business environment, businesses often find that if they don't invest in their employees, they may be easily won over by competitors trying to lure them away.
When a business has a full staff of highly-qualified employees on staff, it can use those qualifications to impress clients, get funding and more. If you don't put that investment in and your competitors do, you may find they are winning the market in your specialty area. The qualifications of your team do make a big difference and when you invest in them, you boost your own business's image.
Related: 4 Secrets Behind the Best Employee Training
If you haven't sent your employees to training recently, it might be time to change that. For best results, sit down with each employee and outline individual career goals, creating a training plan that will get the best results.
