As competition for talent is growing every day, investing in employee development and training can do wonders in getting a competitive advantage over other companies. Survey reports note that successful employers are spending more money into tech training than ever before. The many benefits in the short and long run are triggering them to invest a good portion of their funds in employee development programs. Whilst most companies say they want to drive employee growth and development for the future of work, very few companies have yet to start to confront the issues. Companies, like AT&T’s initiative to retrain nearly half of its workforce, vowed to put aside 1 billion USD into the initiative, after discovering less than half of its workforce was adequately skilled to the company to remain competitive.
Effective training programs actually give an opportunity to shape up future leaders, boost employee empowerment, keep your business competitive, improve productivity and enhance workplace engagement.
As employees feel appreciated and more valued, it eventually results in increased employee loyalty. Also, many dreadful examples of companies who paid the true cost of not providing employee training are in the records. Even when there are many reasons why employers are investing heavily in tech training, here are a few among the standout reasons:
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1)Increase Employee Retention
In simple logic, you can say that an employee is more likely to stay with an organization when they feel engaged and supported. Moreover, additional training will enable them to perform better in their role and this eventually enhances their contentment and job satisfaction. Out of all the part time students that are currently working full time that we’ve interviewed at Xccelerate, every single one of them are self-funded. An employee willing to invest in their personal career growth is an employee companies need to keep. During our enterprise meetings with division heads, we often find that we could count how many of their staff have taken a course at Xccelerate, and that is only the very tip of the iceberg. It does seem to be a disconnect between the eagerness of employees to learn, upskill, and manage their own careers for the future and how much help they receive from their employers.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) states that around 80% of high-skills training and professional development programs to sharpen up soft skills are perceived among the top benefits for retaining employees’ services in the coming years.
A good percentage of the employees value opportunities for career progression within the organization, so there is no wonder when reports say that people are likely to leave if there are not many development and training opportunities.
Moreover, motivated employees give their best to give more productive results with very minimal supervision. In addition to employee retention, the satisfied employees are more likely to refer their skilled friends as potential hires and give them confidence to be a part of the company.
2)Training is Cheaper than Replacing
Recruitment is a very hectic and expensive process and getting the best set of new people to take important roles in the organization is always a tricky scenario. Many employers choose to layoff employees (often without really understanding if they could have been retrained) and spend huge amounts of money on hiring in the new skills that they require. There is no wonder why HR departments are realizing the fact that providing good training to an already familiar team is a better option than replacing them with unknowns.
According to Penn Foster, the estimated expense of replacing an employee comes around one third of the new employee’s annual pay. Even when the cost of a training program may seem heavy in the first place, this is actually a much cheaper option than replacing an existing employee.
In addition to saving the possible direct financial losses when replacing an employee, investing in the right set of people within the team through comprehensive training results in less turnover and longer employee tenures.
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3)Able to Tackle with Current Trends
Staying updated with the changing technologies is very important for a venture to take an extra competitive edge. This is another key reason why companies are taking good effort to provide enough training to the team to enable them to easily adapt to the changes and bring better results.
LinkedIn recently conducted a survey consisting of 5,000 human resources professionals and hiring managers, along with behavioural data analysis, which revealed the four trends most likely to affect the next few years of your career.
Regular training is the key which helps employees to be more productive and efficient and they can be sure that their work reflects best practice of the time. Moreover, this helps the company to stay flexible and upfront in the market as well trained employees can make smarter decisions.
4)Business Growth
Another important benefit of training an existing employee is that it allows the company to deploy said special talent for more roles as and when needed. Having a competent team who can take up additional responsibilities at critical times gives an upper hand for solving potential problems. This eventually leads to better business growth at a much rapid rate.
Moreover, equipping your team to take multiple roles actually minimizes transparency between departments. This is also important to break down silos and erase possibilities of duplicate processes or labour. This even ensures that various teams within the organization are working together to efficiently accomplish core business objectives.
As per the recent survey by Decision Pulse Employers can increase their profit margins by 47% and experience 86% better company value. Companies which have spent a huge amount in leadership development training and programs are amongst the top most admired companies list in Fortune 500 Companies.
5)Better Workplace Culture
Employers should not look at training or reskilling as a one-off activity to fix problems, they need to take action that enables their workforces to continually adapt to change and remain employable. Regular and timely tech training programs can influence the company culture, one where they should be looking at their internal talent base and creating an environment that supports the reskilling of their current workforce.
As this can prompt the analysis and workforce planning of the firm, the team can be clearer about what to expect and not in the near future. This kind of workplace engagement enables managers to perform targeted development programmes to fill the skill gaps and instil more confidence in the team.
As per Human Dynamic reports, 77% of adults polled would consider a company's culture before applying for a job there. On the other hand a company’s culture actually comes from the top and is enforced at all levels of the organization.
The feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom in the workplace eventually lead to negative working habits. Developing a good learning culture in the workplace boosts higher performance among employees. Moreover, satisfied and happy employees are always an asset for a successful venture.
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Final Thoughts
Companies opt for various methods to give tech training to their employees and excellent strategic options really stand out in the end results. Creating a strategic development plan, personalising employee development and targeting soft skills are important. The different learning styles, prompt feedback and the self-driven and self-paced approach makes retraining a better strategy to boost professional development, identifying the skill gaps in the team is important and investing on the right set of people can make a difference.
Companies always push to up-skill their current employees to take up higher roles in the short and long run which is a very important strategy of the talent management process. However, many of them fail to realize that giving top class training is important to make them fit and confident for higher roles.
Some companies mistake training and development as an extra expense without understanding the reality. Timely training programs are actually an investment and the results are in fact experienced on a longer tenure.
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