Leveraging Continuous Training to Keep Your Employees Happy

“Training” was once thought of as a contained, short-term endeavor: Employees were trained on how to do their job, and then they did it. But times have changed.

Now, organizations are recognizing that with continuous training comes continuous improvement. They’re using ongoing training programs to keep their staff agile and well-rounded. Meanwhile, more and more employees are expecting their employers to invest in their career development through training programs that help them hone their skills.?

Not only does continuous training show employees that they’re valued and respected, it also has direct benefits for the company itself.

The 5 benefits of continuous training

Without a doubt, training is a key ingredient in any organization’s success. Cat Lang, previously the head of global enterprise training at Google, said:?

“Done well, training truly can become the connective tissue that unifies an organization’s people and purpose.”

There is a broad array of compelling reasons to invest in continuous training for your employees. Here are the most important ones.

#1 - It reduces staff turnover.

Employee turnover is a major expense. Providing continuous training is a tried and true method of minimizing it.

It’s difficult to attach a precise dollar amount to the cost of employee turnover. First, there are the expenses directly associated with replacing the person who left. That includes the time and resources sunk into advertising the position, screening applicants, and interviewing candidates, followed by onboarding and initial training. After that, there’s the cost of diminished productivity until the new employee is fully established in their role.?

Other factors can be even harder to measure. If high turnover is an ongoing issue, decreased morale and lowered engagement from the remaining employees can significantly impact the performance of a department or an entire business. People with less experience are more likely to make more frequent and more costly mistakes. The overall company culture can be affected when employee retention is low, particularly when those departing are well-liked or in supervisory positions.

Global industry analyst Josh Bersin posits that the total cost of losing an employee can be anywhere from tens of thousands dollars on the low end to as much as two times the employee’s annual salary on the high end. In his analysis, Bersin points out that a company’s employees are not interchangeable resources, where one can easily be swapped out for another. Rather, they are "appreciating assets”; the longer they stay with a company, the more productive, efficient, and knowledgeable they are.

Considering the massive cost of staff turnover, business owners and HR managers have good reason to pursue all possible avenues of minimizing it. One of the most efficient strategies is to offer ongoing training.?

A culture of continuous learning is important to most employees, but this is particularly true of millennials. A Bridge survey found that 86% of millennials would stay in their current position if their company offered career training and development.

Other studies have found even more striking results. According to a 2018 LinkedIn report, 94% of employees said they would stay at an organization longer if their employer invested in their career development.

#2 - It increases employee satisfaction.

At an individual level, employees appreciate feeling that their company is investing in them. It assures them that they’re seen as valuable contributors, not just replaceable drones. When provided with meaningful opportunities to learn and grow, they’re happier and more satisfied with their jobs, and they bring that energy—as well as their new skills and knowledge—back to their work. The net result is heightened morale, stronger loyalty to the company, higher work engagement, and increased productivity.?

This isn’t just a feel-good theory. Numerous studies have revealed the cultural impacts of offering training to employees. For example, when asked whether training has a positive impact on their engagement at work and job satisfaction, 75% of employees said yes. In the same survey by TalentLMS, 76% agreed that they’re more likely to remain at a company that offers ongoing training.?

#3 - It makes your organization more effective.

Ongoing training is worthwhile for your staff, but employees aren’t the only ones who directly benefit. In fact, continuous training is an essential investment in your company’s own future.

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”?

The quote, commonly attributed to Henry Ford, encapsulates the value of training not only for your staff as individuals but also for your organization as a whole.

Simply put: Better-trained people make better employees. If your staff members have strong leadership, communication, and teamwork skills, as well as a thorough understanding of different facets of their workplace, they’ll be empowered to make decisions, solve problems, and contribute their best towards your organization.

#4 - Your competitors are already offering it.

More and more companies are recognizing the advantages of ongoing training. As a result, continuous learning opportunities have become a requirement for any organization that’s serious about attracting and retaining top talent.?

Big tech companies like Google and Apple have long led the way in ongoing training as a selling point for potential employees. But the practice has caught on, and now, it’s rapidly becoming the norm—meaning that organizations without ongoing training programs are falling behind. In 2022, 55% of HR leaders will offer reskilling training to their employees. The figure is even higher for upskilling, at 59%.?

#5 - It has a positive impact on your bottom line.

While the value of improving company culture and increasing employee satisfaction is undeniable, sometimes hard numbers are important for telling the full story (or securing budgets).?

Ongoing training correlates to higher profits. According to a study by the American Society for Training and Development, companies who ranked in the top quarter of average per-employee expenditures on training had a 24% higher profit margin compared to the companies in the bottom quarter. They also had higher income per employee—by an impressive 218%.

How to implement ongoing training in your workplace

Once you’ve decided it’s time for your organization to reap the benefits of continuous learning, follow these steps to get your training program off the ground.?

Make a plan.

It’s easy to get lost in the details when you’re just getting started. Before you do anything else, consider these key questions to make sure you’re on the right track.

What will the training cover?

The first thing you’ll have to determine is what your staff will be learning. Sometimes, this is a straightforward decision, but oftentimes it’s a little more complicated. Think about immediate needs as well as long-term goals for your company and your employees.

Training typically falls into one of several broad categories:?

• Hard skills: Hard skills are the skills required to perform specific job duties. Working with a particular software program, using specialized instruments, and operating machinery are all hard skills.?
• Interpersonal skills: Sometimes known as soft skills or power skills, interpersonal skills are traits and abilities that make it possible for an employee to be a contributing member of your company. They can be harder to quantify and measure than hard skills, but they’re absolutely essential to a functional organization. Examples include communication, negotiation, and leadership.
• Self-management skills: While interpersonal skills have to do with how employees interact with and relate to one another, self-management skills focus on how the employee operates as an individual. Self-management skills include goal setting, accountability, time management, organization, and stress management. Supporting your staff as they develop these abilities will go a long way towards helping them reach their full potential.?
• Life skills: This is the broadest category of all, and one that’s become increasingly important to both employees and employers during the crises of the last few years. Life skills can be applied not just in the workplace, but in all areas of life. This includes things like promoting mental health, cultivating a satisfying work-life balance, and bolstering physical, financial, and emotional well-being.

Once you know what your training will cover, the next step is to figure out when.?

When will training be provided?

There are a number of factors that will affect how often you could, or should, offer training. Here are a few to keep in mind:

• How can training be scheduled so that it doesn’t pull your employees away from other important tasks (causing undue stress for them and a drop in productivity for the business)?
• How much does it cost to develop new training? Is your desired training schedule compatible with your budget?
• What’s a good balance between not overloading employees with training requirements and ensuring that they have the knowledge they need?

Training could be offered once a month, every three months, every six months, or once a year. Some organizations utilize an ad hoc system, where training is available on a more individualized or variable schedule. Depending on your industry and the specific skills your staff needs to learn, you may find that a particular schedule naturally emerges as the most logical for your organization.

How will success be measured?

Before you launch your training program, you’ll want to be sure that you have a way to monitor its implementation and analyze the results.?

The way you measure success will depend on the focus and structure of your training program. A one-time seminar that teaches a simple software program will require different metrics than a ten-week course on developing communication skills.?

With that in mind, here are a few basics to consider:

• How many staff members start the training course? Just as importantly, how many finish it?
• How well do employees perform on learning assessments? Remember that to accurately determine how much your employees have learned, it’s often necessary to use a pre-training assessment, so that you have a baseline against which to measure.
• How has your employees’ behavior changed as a result of the training? This can’t always be measured directly, but you may see evidence in indirect ways. For example, after time management training, there may be a shift in subsequent survey responses about work-related stress.?
• Did any key performance indicators change after employees completed the training? The KPIs to watch will vary widely based on industry and type of training. Potential relevant metrics include monthly sales growth, number of worksite accidents, or customer retention rate.
• Were employees happy with the training? One of the biggest reasons to provide continuous training is to boost job satisfaction and company loyalty among your employees—so it’s important to make sure that what you’re offering is useful to them.

Decide how to deliver it.

Long gone are the days of textbooks and photocopied worksheets. Now, training programs can take any of these forms:

• Ready-made courses: These courses can be customized to suit a huge variety of training goals with minimum time investment. They come with the benefit of having been built by expert instructional designers, removing much of the guesswork for employers and providing the best possible experience for employees.
• Discussions: Many people find that they learn best when they’re able to interact with other participants. By providing opportunities for discussions through message boards or virtual roundtables, you’ll encourage learners to engage with and internalize new material.
• Videos: Video is among the more popular learning formats, with 50% of employees mentioning it as an option they would like to see. People already consume vast amounts of content in video format through social media sites like TikTok and YouTube; providing workplace training in a comfortable, familiar medium is an obvious choice.
• Mobile apps: One of the biggest advantages of mobile apps is ease of access. Many of us have our cell phone within arm’s reach nearly all the time. When training materials are provided through a mobile app, employees are empowered to learn wherever and whenever is convenient for them.?
• Games: Gamification is one of the fastest rising trends in workplace training. Incorporating elements like points, badges, leaderboards, timers, bonuses, and power-ups can make all the difference between a topic that’s dull and uninspiring and one that’s memorable and engaging.?
• Microlearning: This is another growing trend. Microlearning, as the name implies, emphasizes small amounts of content introduced in short activities. It can easily be combined with other formats, such as video or games. It’s one of the most effective ways for employees to quickly gain new skills or refresh old ones.

Evaluate, update, refine.

Once you’ve launched your training program, you can move onto the next step: figuring out how to make it better.?

Just as it’s important to get input from your employees when you’re designing your training program, it’s vital to get their feedback at the conclusion of the program as well. Course completion and pass/fail rates are useful, but they won’t tell you the full story. For that, ask your employees directly if the training program was helpful to them, what they gained from it, and how it could be improved.

Once you’ve collected those responses, review them alongside other metrics to see how your employees’ experiences are reflected in the data. This analysis stage can be used to pinpoint issues with the course content and delivery: Does the course provide too much information, or not enough? Is the structure repetitive and boring, leading to high drop-out rates? Or does it cover a topic that your employees find irrelevant, resulting in a low buy-in rate?

Some training materials, like those that focus on interpersonal or life skills, are more or less evergreen. Others, by their nature, have a shorter shelf life. For example, compliance training related to specific regulations or hard skills training tied to a particular software can quickly become outdated. Information that’s no longer accurate or applicable is no use to anyone, so be sure that your material stays up to date.

Remember that continuous training should be just that—continuous. Learning is a lifelong process, and your employees want to continue gaining new skills and knowledge over the course of their career. You can help them by expanding your organization’s library of training materials so that there’s always something to learn.

Getting ready to launch your organization’s continuous training program? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what we can do for you.