Whilst everyone is different, not many people like to stand still in life. As a society, we’re often working towards the next step; the next big thing. The same can be said for within our careers.
However, it can be easy for individuals to get stuck in a rut at work, busying themselves with completing task after task instead of thinking about how they can develop personally to reach the next stage in their career.
The truth is, employee development is important for a strong sense of wellbeing and happiness at work and investing money into training is so important to ensure that employees feel valued by the company and therefore motivated to stay. If an employee is happy and can see themselves progressing in their career then they’re likely to become one of your best members of staff.
Let’s look at the reasons why training makes employees happy…
Increased self-worth
Learning new skills can help to increase a person’s sense of self-worth at work; an employee with a high sense of self-worth is an employee who can clearly see their progression within the company and feels motivated to work towards their goals. They see that they are valued and see that they can make a difference and an impact within their team and the wider company beyond.
This positivity can also rub off on those around them, encouraging others to follow suit to be motivated and focused on their personal development. A can-do attitude within a team really can be infectious and set a company culture on the right path. A workplace full of people eager to learn is a productive and positive workplace.
Employee retention
Employees that feel valued and see advancement in their current role are much less likely to leave and move on to something else. By investing in good training opportunities, you are expressing to your workforce that you care. You are making a statement that you want the best from your employees and you want them to get the best out of their role.
Low employee retention can prove to be very expensive for a business. Spending money on good training opportunities, alongside a strong employee development and wellbeing programme, can really help reduce the risk of high turnover. Give your employees the opportunity to advance and move upwards and/or sideways within the company and remove the need for them to be searching for new opportunities elsewhere.
Increased efficiency
This may seem obvious, but good employee training is an effective way to increase overall efficiency within the business. Training has a knock-on effect; self-worth, motivation, increased output, increased efficiency. It can also help to take the business in different directions as employees think outside the box and gain the confidence to suggest new processes and/or changes to existing processes.
Additionally, an efficient workforce is a self-sufficient workforce. With confident employees to keep the ball rolling, managers and leaders can spend less time on day-to-day support and more time focusing on driving the business forward.
Training creates the next generation of leaders
Training is all about development. Without developing employees, how can you expect them to reach the next stage in their career? By investing in the development of your team, you are giving them the opportunity to form the next generation of leaders within your business.
Training can also help people to realise how they can help others. For instance, by asking that each member of the team presents and delivers their learnings to the rest of the team after they have received training, you are working on their ability to teach others. This also helps them to retain the new skills and information that they have learnt.
It could be training around managing a team and HR, new technology such as useful tools and platforms or automation and cobots, or perhaps even first aid or mental health first aid training. Whatever it is, ask them to share the key takeaways with the rest of the team. Who knows – the next training course they sign up to may just be teaching based!
Whether you are a manager or director, or an employee thinking about the development opportunities in your current role – it’s good to know how beneficial a good workplace training programme can be in both a personal and professional sense.
This is really good advice. There are clearly a lot of benefits.