Many businesses are laser focused on the next sales goal or meeting year-end numbers that they forget a vital step. Training. Many employees and organizations think of training as an afterthought, a budget drain or even wasted time taken away from the day. In actuality, great training can make for smarter employees and an increase in sales. It can also decrease costly employee turnover.
HR Magazine found that companies investing $1,500 or more per employee in a year on training averaged 24 percent higher profit than companies investing in less training. In another study, The American Society for Training and Development gathered training information from over 2,500 firms and found that companies offering more rebost training programs have 218 percent higher income per employee than those that offered less training.
What are the benefits of training and development?
The importance of training offers many benefits for companies of all sizes and industries. Let’s take a look at some of the major ones.
Industry advancements:
No matter what industry you are in, times change. Maybe there are advancements in technology or changes in product offerings. No matter what the changes are, you don’t want your company to be left behind the competition. Great training can help keep employees current.
Sharpen employee skill sets:
Every employee naturally has strengths and weaknesses. Even employees who are in the same field or department. Ongoing training is key to building each employee’s skill set. This will not only improve everyone’s on job performance, but will build confidence.
Employee motivation:
We have touched on this a little bit, but employees who are constantly learning are more likely to stay as employees. Turnover is costly. According to The Society for Human Resource Management, the average cost-per-hire is $4,129, while the average time it takes to fill a given position is 42 days. That is a lot of money and time wasted! Instead, give current employees several chances to increase their skill set and invest in their development.
Promote from within
HR departments are already overwhelmed. The less time and money they need to recruit management level employees the better. A great training and development program increases employee learning as they grow at the company. That way when a new position opens up at a higher level, promotion can be given from within. Not only does this save the company money, but will create happy and engaged employees.
HR recruitment tool
When a company is looking for new great talent, they want the best. They also want a stellar prospect to choose them over the competition. One tool in recruitment is a great training and development program. Showing potential employees that they can sharpen existing skills and also take classes in areas they want to improve in, is a great employee perk.
What should a corporate learning program accomplish?
There are so many pros to building a strong training program for your company. Now that you know the importance of training, how do you ensure the success of your program? The first step is determining your learning goal. Without a strong goal all those hours spent crafting training materials won’t be effective. Plus, your intended audiences will walk away feeling the program did not meet their needs.
Create a strong learning goal
When creating your training goal, ask yourself these questions:
1. Do my company goals align with my learning goal?
Instead of focusing on the details of your training program, think about what overall goals you have for your business. Then determine what your learning goal will be. That way, all goals are tied together and there is a clear focus.
2. Who are my audiences?
Next determine who will be affected by your training program. Yes, your employees taking the training, but who else in your organization will be involved in your learning platform? If you are a publicly-held company who uses on-going contractors, your audiences could be stakeholders, employees, freelancers, administrators, and team leads.
3. What do I want my employees to learn?
Although there is training at every employee level, if you look at your program overall, what is the program takeaway? Is this to bring employee learning to a certain skill level? Or to gain more in-depth product or service knowledge? Or maybe you want to retain the top industry talent and your training program will be a key employee motivator. Whatever it is, think big picture on what the impact of your training program will be.
4. How will I communicate my learning goal?
Finally, after you create a strong learning goal, how will you share this with all your audiences? It’s important that everyone understands what they should know after participating in the learning program.