Learning and development is an important part of any professional’s career: gaining new skills is the main way to progress.
As a result, lots of businesses invest in training for their employees to help them develop and become more effective at their jobs.
The net impact of this is a major positive for most companies – and here are three reasons why.
An excellent return on investment
All organisations need to budget appropriately and determine their most important priorities for expenditure.
Sometimes, senior management decide that they would rather spend money on tried-and-tested areas that improve profitability (such as technology) than take a risk with internal training.
However, staff development is actually one of the best investments that a business can make. When employees gain more skills, they tend to immediately apply them to their role – which means the company immediately begins to benefit from their development and increased productivity.
These changes can easily be measured by checking key indicators such as sales figures, retention, differences in output, and employee satisfaction.
Improves retention
When employees feel that they are growing and learning in their job, they are more likely to stay at their company.
This is especially true of brighter staff, as the best employees tend to enjoy a challenge – which means they like to try new things and build their knowledge and skills. If a business doesn’t give its workforce the chance to do this, the best performers will often begin to seek new opportunities for development elsewhere.
Making sure that staff are able to progress personally and professionally is a good way for businesses to ensure that they keep experienced staff, rather than losing them to a competitor and having to spend money and time recruiting and retraining new people.
Attracts better candidates
Similarly, one of the things that can make a business attractive to prospective employees is the possibility of career progression and learning, which means a good training programme is a great incentive.
It also means that candidates who apply because of this are more likely to be in the business for a long time, as they will want to explore all of the potential avenues for progression.
Lastly, it shows that the business cares about its employees and wants them to stay – which is a very good indicator that it’s a good company to work for.
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