Mia
Today’s business world is highly competitive and fast-paced. New entrants and industry giants are continuously leveling up the playing field for existing businesses. Companies that stick to traditional practices and neglect technological change are lagging in the industry. Likewise, organizations that aren’t providing learning and development opportunities to employees are unable to capitalize on their skills and expertise. Continuous learning and training programs bring sustainable success and growth prospects. It allows employees to upskill themselves while improving workplace efficiency and ultimately benefitting the organization. The only way to match the pace of today’s rapid development is to provide timely training and development to your workforce.
The function of human resources has exponentially enhanced its value and role in organizational efficiency. Training and development is a division within HR that has significantly transformed over the last decade. Organizations have realized that they can attain long-term business success only by leveraging the actual capacity of their employees. On-the-job training and development opportunities boost employee morale and engagement, leading to enhanced efficiency and performance.
According to Statista, companies have significantly increased employee expenditure on training and development. It went from $1000 in 2008 to around $1400 in 2019 per employee. Such figures show the increasing value of training and development across the global corporate sector. There are numerous ways training and development can benefit your business, and this article will be discussing five of those.
- Attain competitive advantage
Innovation and creativity are critical drivers of business success. To attain competitive advantages, organizations must focus on their essential factors of success. Among these factors, a talented workforce plays a crucial role in leading organizations toward unprecedented growth. But if your employee base doesn’t improve its knowledge base or sharpen its skillset, achieving competitive advantages becomes challenging. That’s because keeping pace with transforming industry norms and marketplace dynamics is indispensable for the survival of your venture. So, sponsor educational programs for your employee base, such as an online MBA. And if your employees pose questions like, is an MBA right for me and my career prospects? Let them know of all the career benefits that come with pursuing higher education.
Through proper training and development, employees can upskill and reskill themselves while remaining abreast of market developments. It ultimately benefits your business and provides you with a higher competitive advantage. Your venture becomes more capable of complementing the needs of the contemporary business environment, improving your competitiveness.
- Increase employee retention
According to a report by Whatfix, 94% of employees prefer staying with organizations that provide training and development opportunities. Employees prioritize organizations that offer them a window of enhancing their skill set. Any employee will remain with an organization for a longer period if they feel valued. Besides, individuals join organizations to boost their career prospects and industry knowledge.
Training and development programs provide employees the avenue to learn new skills and grow. When employees feel that they are developing with an organization both personally and professionally, their engagement enhances. Ultimately, the entire business enjoys sustainable growth, given its skilled workforce.
- Employer branding
According to Glassdoor, more than 70% of applicants check an employers’ reputation before applying. Opportunities for growth with ample learning and development programs are among the most critical elements of an employer’s reputation. Continuous learning and development initiatives allow companies to attract top talent in the market.
Moreover, this employer branding also enhances the reputation among customer segments. People recognize your organization as compassionate and caring towards employees. Ultimately, it enhances your return on investment (ROI) on training and development activities. Besides, since employees are your internal customers, training and development effectively strengthen their loyalty to your brand.
- Develop future leaders
Talent pipelining is an effective way for organizations to identify competent employees. This way, companies can separate their most capable workers and train them for advanced roles and responsibilities. It becomes significantly more important when searching for individuals to take over leadership positions. Businesses moving forward strategically develop leaders from within the organization while also preserving the existing organizational culture.
These initiatives allow your organization to prepare future leaders well-versed in taking your mission and vision forward.
- Improve employee engagement and team collaboration
Training and development activities are an excellent opportunity to engage employees. They interact and learn collectively in inter-departmental teams, which enhances their collaboration skills. They start working with better efficiency while benefiting from collective resources.
According to ICSLearn, 87% of employees believe that training and development activities are essential for effectively completing a job. That’s because it enables them to share information across teams with better collaboration. Your business drives radically higher productivity from the same workforce due to team collaboration and employee engagement.
Conclusion
Training and development have inevitably become an unavoidable function for every business. Your business cannot withstand competition if it doesn’t train its workforce according to current market requirements. Discussed above are some of the benefits your business can enjoy from training and development. However, the actual list is innumerable. Apart from enhanced employee engagement and competitive advantages, your company can also boost its critical success factors and enjoy long-term growth.
