There are some very valuable benefits of training employees and, in what follows, I will explain what these benefits are.
If you work in HR, are a manager, or perhaps you are the owner of a company, this post might help you to better decide whether or not it is worth investing in employee and staff training.
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1. Employee and Staff Retention Rates
One of the biggest costs many companies have is the cost of having to rehire staff and retrain them.
The first 90 days are especially important, i.e. during the induction (onboarding) of new employees. This is because this timeframe is when a staggering 45% of new employees leave a company on average (from studies that have been done).
So you can see the importance of training when it comes to newly hired staff and this training should cover:
- Job training – making sure that they are taught the basics of their new role properly so that they begin with some confidence and momentum in the role, and to ensure they actually understand what they are doing (it’s surprising how often this training is not given).
- Company culture training – one of the most commonly missed and yet important pieces of training that I recommend to include for new hires, is in the company culture, background, and ethics. Such training can help the new employee to really feel a part of the company.
- Leadership training – for those new hires who are taking on a management role in your company. Many managers rise through the ranks but often have not been trained in key areas such as Inclusive Leadership, intercultural communication, or how to manage virtual teams (to give a few examples).
2. Happier Staff and Better Workplace Morale
When staff receive the right training, it provides you, as a business, with a far more fun, vibrant, and generally much happier workforce.
A happy workforce and workplace tend to translate into lower staff turnover and better productivity!
To create a happier workforce, training in certain topics can be useful, such as:
- Inclusive Leadership – because it is training that can help your managers to better understand how to make all employees feel included and valued in the workplace. By trying to reduce the isolation that some employees might otherwise feel, you begin to create a happier workforce.
- Team building – whilst not all employees might at first enjoy the idea of a team-building workshop, this type of session can be surprisingly effective at bringing staff together.
- Digital wellbeing – if you are a company in which staff spend a lot of time on a computer, then it is well worth considering providing them some understanding of digital wellness and well-being. A more relaxed and balanced employee tends to mean a happier and more relaxed one.
3. Increased Productivity
Naturally, an employee who has been provided with the appropriate job and skills-based training is going to understand their job better, than without the training.
Yet, for some reason, as mentioned earlier, a surprising number of employees (and managers) do not get the proper training.
In one survey we did, for example, we found that over 35% of managers had received insufficient training.
4. Duty of Care and Ethics
As managers or business owners, we have a certain duty of care to the people we manage, both from an ethical and legal perspective.
Not only is it the right thing ethically and morally to try and treat our staff well and to provide a positive and good working environment, but in many countries, you are legally required to provide the right support for your employees’ mental health and well-being.
Managers very often have not been trained in areas that are important to understand, when it comes to how best to look after the staff they manage.
The types of training you can provide here can include:
- Introduction to DDA – to provide managers with a better understanding of accessibility for all.
- I know I’ve already mentioned this one earlier but Inclusive Leadership is such a useful workshop to ensure that managers understand how to make everyone feel a part of the team.
- Likewise, any titles relating to wellness training are all very useful for creating the right environment to help manage the mental well-being of your employees.
5. Reduction in Employee Costs
In addition to increased productivity (mentioned in point 3), proper training can also help you to reduce the overall employee salary costs through a more refined workforce.
It stands to reason that if you have 10 highly well-trained and efficient employees, they can often do the same as 15 untrained, unmotivated, and uninspired employees.
6. Training Can Create Better Managers
Even the most experienced managers can lack certain skills.
In fact, most managers lack some vital skills, particularly so because what managers need to learn and be skilled in changes with the times.
A good example of this is management skills in managing equality and diversity (more on these topics later).
These areas have, of course, always been very important but in more recent times companies have begun to have a better appreciation of the essential need to train managers in these areas.
Many managers are often fairly new to the role (we all have to start somewhere) and they often lack vital management skills. A few examples worth considering include:
- Dealing with Difficult People – useful for teaching managers techniques to correctly manage employees, even in difficult situations.
- Menopause Awareness for Managers in the Workplace – both men and women (especially given so many men manage teams in the workplace) in this era should have an understanding of how menopause can impact some employees. A greater understanding of the issues many women can experience makes for a better manager.
- Delegation Skills can also be extremely useful for managers to understand correctly in order to bring out the best in each individual.
- And an often missed and yet valuable topic to train managers on is how to manage different generations in the workplace.
7. More Adaptable and Flexible Workforce
Training is also beneficial if you want to make your company as versatile, adaptable, and flexible as possible.
In other words, putting in a ‘Change Management’ plan into place in your company can be incredibly useful.
At certain times, as a company, being able to adapt very quickly to market conditions such as during a pending recession (or during a pandemic) can in certain situations, save or greatly help your business.
Having staff who are trained to be adaptable and to have skills that can be adaptable can be extremely useful.
Let me give you one quick example. During the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, you might have been a business providing classroom teaching for adults and found that your workshops were immediately canceled.
With staff who are open to adapting and trained to be I.T. literate and comfortable around technology, you might have been able to quickly move to provide online workshops.
8. Chance to Attract Higher Calibre Staff
By being known as a company that provides good staff training, you also begin to be seen as a company that helps its employees.
Word soon gets around and you can begin to attract an even higher caliber of candidates for vacancies you have.
Ambitious and high-achieving employees often care about career development and being a good training provider in your business, should help you to improve both productivity and to build a positive reputation as a good employer.
9. Risk Management
Training employees is also essential when it comes to Risk Management.
There is a legal requirement to provide training in certain areas, whilst other risk management-related topics will help to make your employees safer.
Many companies choose, for example, to provide mandatory training in:
- Fire safety in the workplace
- Online security
- Food safety (if you, for example, run a restaurant or food outlet)
10. Diversity and Equality in the Workplace
There are definite benefits also to taking seriously providing training on diversity and equality in the workplace.
The benefits include:
- Employees feel valued and better understood when colleagues better understand equality and diversity at work.
- Managers begin to understand better techniques for hiring by learning how natural biases can alter how we make decisions.
- Employees and managers learn to be empathetic and understanding of different ways of communicating and working.
Take the case of staff who organize meetings and who might not have been trained in DDA and who thus do not consider the constraints faced by a wheelchair user and comfortable access to certain rooms. If this is the case, people who cannot access the venue due to disability will feel left out and be demoralized and less engaged at work, as a result.
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