Happy Employee, Happy Business

The new year is officially a week old and 80 percent of the resolutions made for 2015 have already been broken! All kidding aside, as we consider resolutions for your business, one that I strongly encourage you to consider making is to invest in training for your staff.

Increase productivity
Not to belabor the obvious, but the more skilled your staff is, the more productive they will be.

According with the Huffington Post, the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) reveals that businesses who provide training:

• Have 218 percent higher income per employee than those with less comprehensive training
• Enjoy a 24 percent higher profit margin than those who spend less on training
• Generate a six percent higher shareholder return if the training expenditure per employee increases by $680

Whether it’s re-training employees on internal processes or coaching them up on a new software system to support your business, or both, the dividends are there for the taking.

Attract new talent
Training is great for attracting new talent. Many prospective employees look specifically at the training opportunities in addition to monetary compensation. Having a clearly defined training benefit as part of your offering enhances your company image to potential hires. The article 5 tips for a successful training program by Lorri Freifeld, training magazine, should help to get you started with your program.

Retention
Employers pay a steep price when there’s high employee turnover. Some of the factors to consider when a position becomes vacant:

• Time spent filling the position
• Hours lost in productivity
• Overtime for employees who need to make up hours for the vacancy
• Orientation and training of new employee
• Administrative costs such as advertising, recruiting, interviewing and onboarding

Research conducted by Rasmussen College shows that more than half of the U.S. adults surveyed say they do not have significant growth opportunities in their current position. By committing resources to existing employees, you’re demonstrating a commitment to your staff by offering growth opportunities and a clear career path.

So before you lump invest in training in with losing 20 pounds and traveling more to 2015 resolutions that’ll never come to fruition, take steps to commit to training. Ask what training people need and want and make it part of their professional development plan. In the end you can map your newly met resolution directly to company key performance indicators, like retention of A/B players, cost to hire metrics and productivity rates.