How Employee Training Oils the Wheels of Business Growth

 Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” This is very true when it comes to employee training.

But we cannot ask you to take our word for it. Without real-life proof and measurable benefits, every entrepreneur would be forgiven to reject employee training as expensive and non-essential. When you’re running a business on a tight budget, you have no time for risky investments.

So let’s give you something to think about.

What follows are real-life proofs and measurable benefits of employee training.

They should help you understand how upskilling your employees and preparing them for today’s fickle business environment can improve your bottom line and launch you towards your goals.

Why You Need to Invest in Employee Training Right Now

Here’s how smart and continual employee training oils the wheels of business growth:

1. Build It and The Right People Will Come

This famous saying may no longer apply to everything in business, but it paints a very accurate picture when it comes to employee training. In this context, “Build it and they will come” suggests that great corporate training programs attract the right kind of people for the job.

Need we elaborate on the significance of talent for your business growth?

Your organization can hardly gain any steam without the right people. You cannot rely on unskilled, inexperienced, unprofessional, and ineffective employees to help you develop great products, achieve a competitive edge, and keep customers satisfied, can you? No, you can’t.

Great employee training programs attract people who are eager to learn and grow together with your organization. This is a crucial ingredient for progress. That way, employee training also reduces the cost of researching the talent pool, recruiting, and conducting interviews.

2. Hiring for Attitude and Training for Skills

You might have heard that all leading companies have started “Hiring for attitude and training for skills.” This highly unorthodox approach to finding new hires puts all the stress on onboarding and employee training for one simple reason - skills can be taught, attitude cannot.

It’s always better to have an unskilled employee who’s willing to learn, improve, and adjust than to end up with an expert whose modus operandi denies any innovation. Besides, expertise is no longer as important as it once was. Many hard skills are going obsolete extremely fast.

Today's employers are looking for flexibility and curiosity in employees instead.

This approach would never work without continual training. But when it does work, it delivers incredible benefits to organizations by helping them hire highly capable people and further equipping these people for success. It’s hiring for the modern age.

3. Never Lose Your Best Employees Again

The only thing worse than hiring disengaged employees is watching engaged employees leave. If you’re planning to see your organization grow, you need to start reducing your employee turnover rate right now.

Let’s see if and how employee training can contribute towards that end.

Employee training provides opportunities for improvement, which initiates career growth. If your employees have a chance to advance in their careers while staying in a familiar surrounding, they’ll have no need to switch jobs.

As long as their job is stimulating enough, and as long as their peers and mentors are supporting their growth, they’ll be happy to stay where they are.

This is the kind of culture that great employee training helps create. Career-wise, anything less would not be worth sticking around. This is why a typical millennial changes jobs every five years - if there’s no room for personal growth and development, then why not close that door?

4. Agile Teams Rely on Good Communication

But employee training doesn’t cater to the growth and development of individual employees only. Great training programs put an emphasis on teambuilding as well, thus ensuring that individual employees are also highly functional members of their teams and departments.

There’s no longer “I” in business. Instead, the focus is on collaboration.

Employee training boasts numerous benefits when it comes to this. We’ve already discussed its ability to attract people who are the right cultural fit for your organization, which is a precursor for prolific collaboration. Beyond that, training teaches team agility and flexibility.

Modern-day employee training software and LMS software solutions come with a host of capabilities for social learning. Features such as discussion boards, gamification, and group tasks prepare teams for the creative exchange of ideas, group brainstorming, and collaborative projects.

5. Happy Employees Are Productive Employees

As many as 70% of today’s employees never reach their full potential, according to recent research. It's no wonder that so many of them feel disengaged.

Without something to drive them forward, employees have no reason to try harder than they are expected to. Why would they go one extra mile when they can stay tucked in and comfortably numb in their current positions?

As an employer, you can think about training as a tool you can use for changing negative or idle attitudes. This mindset is contagious. If you don’t give your employees a sneak peek into what your organization could become, they will never bother to try to help you get there.

Through training, employees not only develop new skills but also a new kind of mindset that is goal-oriented, competitive, and driven. They’ll start brainstorming growth hacks and innovating your organization from deep within. Negativity is contagious, but so is knowledge.

Invest in  Employee Training Today

If you really are running a business on a tight budget, you should know that employee training doesn’t have to burn your pocket. Instead of hiring an outside specialist, you can invest in employee training software or LMS software and start training your employees yourself.

Eventually, you’ll be able to notice a difference in productivity and engagement.

Take the initiative and your business will start growing exponentially. Your customer satisfaction rates will increase along with your sales. And when it comes to employee satisfaction, you’ll be able to measure that as well by using surveys and encouraging honest feedback.