10 Benefits of Employee Training for HR & Workplace Trainers

Employee training helps people feel confident in their roles, work more effectively, and stay longer with an organization. For HR and workplace trainers, it builds a stronger, safer, and more engaged workforce while reducing turnover and the hidden costs that come with it.

Effective training also supports organizational learning and a culture of continuous learning, allowing knowledge and good practice to spread more easily across teams.

Looking for more staff morale, retention, and employee journey guidance? Also check out our articles on employee experience & engagement management.

1. How does training improve employee retention?

Training improves employee retention by helping new hires feel confident, supported, and integrated into the company from their first day.

The irony is that one of the highest costs many companies have is the cost of having to rehire staff and retrain them, so keeping employees once hired is essential.

The first 90 days are especially important because studies consistently show that many employees who leave do so early in their employment if onboarding and support are poor.

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 they begin their new role with confidence, 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 or how to manage virtual teams (to give a few examples).

Find more practical ways to improve retention in our guide to reducing employee turnover.

2. How does training boost morale and engagement?

Training boosts morale by helping employees feel valued, included, and equipped to work confidently with their colleagues.

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 – while 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 well-being – if you are a company in which staff spend a lot of time on a computer, then it is well worth considering providing them with some understanding of digital wellness and well-being. A more relaxed and balanced employee tends to mean a happier and more relaxed one.

Many companies now include training as part of their wider employee development programs.

You can also explore more ways to motivate your team in our guide on improving employee engagement.

3. How does employee training increase productivity?

Training increases productivity by giving staff the skills and knowledge they need to perform tasks efficiently and adapt quickly to changes.

This includes regular upskilling and reskilling so employees can handle new tools, processes, and ways of working.

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.

Furthermore, more highly skilled employees tend to mean a team that is more adaptable in the sense that they are able to more easily manage change in the workplace, or stand in for colleagues when needed.

Surprisingly, many employees (and managers) still do not receive adequate training.

In one survey we did, for example, we found that over 35% of managers had received insufficient training.

4. Why is training important for duty of care and ethics?

Training supports duty of care and ethics by ensuring managers understand how to create a safe, fair, and legally compliant working environment.

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.
• Inclusive Leadership is one of the most valuable training topics for helping managers create workplaces where everyone feels included and supported.
• 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.

Supporting well-being is also part of creating psychological safety — see our psychological safety activities for trainers.

5. How can training reduce overall employee costs?

Training reduces employee costs by creating a more skilled, efficient workforce that can meet business needs without requiring additional staff.

When done well, training delivers a clear training ROI because a smaller, well-developed team can achieve more with fewer resources.

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.

Well-structured training contributes to genuine performance improvement across teams.

6. How does training help create better managers?

Manager training builds stronger leaders by developing skills in communication, delegation, inclusion, conflict handling, and team support.

In fact, most managers lack some vital skills, particularly 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.
• An often missed and yet valuable topic to train managers on is how to manage different generations in the workplace.

7. How does training make your workforce more adaptable?

Training makes a workforce more adaptable by equipping employees with flexible skills that help them respond effectively to change.

Good training also improves knowledge transfer, helping staff share skills more effectively and support each other during periods of change.

In other words, putting in a Change Management plan 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 who have transferable skills 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 IT literate and comfortable around technology, you might have been able to quickly move to provide online workshops.

8. Why does good training attract higher-quality staff?

When a company is known for looking after its staff through proper training, it naturally attracts applicants who care about developing their skills and building a long-term career.

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 the 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 improve both productivity and build a positive reputation as a good employer.

9. How does employee training improve risk management?

Training improves risk management by ensuring employees understand safety procedures, legal requirements, and best practices that reduce workplace risks.

There is a legal requirement to provide certain types of compliance training, such as fire safety, online security, and food safety.

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. How does training strengthen equality and diversity at work?

Training strengthens equality and diversity by helping employees and managers understand bias, accessibility, communication differences, and inclusive behavior.

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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