Is Your Employee Training Program Helping or Hurting Your Organization?
When hiring talent, leaders often look for the perfect mix of knowledge, skill, and experience that a person can bring to the table. The stronger the resume, the quicker the hire can make an impact. However, as the world of work around us changes, new skills are needed to remain competitive. Employees know this and look to their employers to offer opportunities to help keep their skills fresh – and if their company does not, employees have no problem jumping ship for someone who will. With 7 out of 10 employees reporting a company’s training program influences their decision to stay or leave, offering development opportunities is a must do to increase engagement and retention of top performers.
As leaders, we have the responsibility to support our employees through setting professional goals, identifying learning opportunities and encouraging personal growth. Leaders today should strive for a culture of continuous learning, which requires a continuous improvement approach – one where leaders are regularly assessing the impact of their programs.
So, how do you know if your organization’s training and development efforts are helping or hurting your bottom line? One word…metrics. Developing a training program dashboard geared at measuring training effectiveness will tell the business case of what is working and what is not. For example, link your training opportunities to real business outcomes such as:
- Impact on business goals and objectives
- Correlation to change in profit
- Change in strategic results
- Time to job impact
- Turnover and retention trends
Learning opportunities do not have to break the bank. Consider low-cost training initiatives such as lunch-n-learns, do-it-yourself development plans, cross-training, or implementing a mentoring program. With 87% of millennials reporting professional development opportunities are very important when choosing an employer, companies wanting to attract and retain talent must meet these personal development needs.
Supporting employee development serves to strengthen an organization’s culture, employee loyalty, and engagement. Reach out to us at https://www.successfulculture.com/contact/ to discover how we can help your organization grow your talent of today into tomorrow. Our SCALE Academy is the perfect place to start! Building cultures where everyone thrives is what we do best.
