Sometimes, employee training can feel like a luxury, rather than a need. Especially when times are tough and you need to cut costs across the organization, you might find yourself wondering if employee training is really worth the time and the money that it absorbs.
After all, it often takes workers away from the tasks you need them to do at the time, and it uses up capital that you could be applying to other purposes.
However, while it might be tempting to slash it on occasion, employee training is one of the central pillars that support your company’s growth and revenue. Employee training for enterprises brings a number of benefits, such that it will pay for itself over the long term.
1. Improve employee engagement
Engaged employees are productive and effective, and employee training is one of the fastest ways to boost engagement. When you invest in training for your workers, you demonstrate that you care about their professional development and want to help them increase their skills. On top of that, training your workers means that you can enjoy a more skilled workforce that is more committed to their jobs and more united to work as a team.
It’s not just about training workers in new skills. Employee training includes workshops that strengthen corporate culture and promote employee bonding. Although these are usually fun activities, they play an important role in creating a positive work atmosphere and helping employees feel valued, which in turn boost employee engagement.
2. Boost your brand reputation
Companies that carry out employee training programs enjoy a stronger reputation among job seekers than those that don’t. That in turn helps you to attract top talent, cutting the costs of new hires and increasing employee retention.
Millennials in particular are eager to work for an employer who helps them grow their abilities. Opportunities for career growth remain the most important factor for jobseekers choosing a new position, with 56% ranking it above compensation, while 81% of workers say that corporate culture plays a strong role in their decision to apply for a job. In contrast, 38% of jobseekers say that bad reviews from employees would lead them to reject an employer out of hand.
What’s more, happier, more confident employees who’ve enjoyed good employee training tend to deliver better customer service, helping boost your brand reputation among customers as well as job hunters.
3. Increase productivity across the organization
When employees are properly trained in the tasks and responsibilities that come their way, they feel more confident, and that confidence translates into improved performance. Workers who have mastered their tasks can carry them out with more skill and efficiency than those who are still trying to learn on the job.
People are also far more productive when they understand the bigger picture of the enterprise. If employee training includes an explanation of the business vision and an overview of strategy, employees are better able to see how their job contributes to the company as a whole. The feeling that they play a part in every business success is a powerful motivator and drives greater productivity and achievement. A Gallup poll concluded that improving employees’ sense of identification with the success of the business by 10% would cut employee turnover by 8.1% and boost profitability by 4.4%.
Additionally, you can make your enterprise more productive overall when you use training programs to discover the strengths and weaknesses within your workforce. Once you know which skillsets are missing or scarce, you can train employees or hire strategically to fill the gaps.
4. Maximize the impact of business tech
All the cutting-edge, AI-powered, time-saving tech in the world isn’t going to be much use if your employees don’t know how to use them to their fullest extent. Very often, executives get sidetracked by “shiny new object” syndrome, which tempts them into buying the newest enterprise management software or project collaboration platform.
The expectation is that these will transform business efficiency, but those hopes are dashed when employees ignore the new tools in favor of the ones that they’re familiar with. Or worse, use only some of the features without discovering the real potential of the software. Regular employee training helps make sure that your workers know which tools to use for which tasks, and apply them effectively to increase productivity and reduce busy work.
5. Raise compliance with business regulations
In 2020, business standards are mourning up on every side. From product requirements to data confidentiality, businesses have to navigate a minefield of rules and regulations to avoid heavy fines and penalties. The best way to ensure that your enterprise complies with all the laws is to educate your employees about them, so that no one exposes your company to punishments for failing to meet business requirements.
6. Sharpen your business security
When it comes to cybersecurity, your employees are always the weakest links. They tend to use simple passwords that are easy to guess, or unthinkingly respond to phishing emails. It’s human to make mistakes, but hackers are not forgiving.
It’s crucial to deliver effective cybersecurity training to all your employees so that they can recognize phishing emails and avoid being duped by them, for example, or ensure that they only use strong passwords. Cybersecurity employee training prevents workers from making rookie mistakes that leave the doors wide open for hackers and cybercriminals.
Employee training is not a luxury
Employee training provides significant benefits to your enterprise. Investing in employee training helps to increase productivity, employee engagement, and brand reputation across your enterprise, as well as helping improve cybersecurity and compliance and make your business tech more effective.
