Benefits of Investing in Your People

A recent study by LinkedIn found that a staggering 94% of employees have admitted to leaving a job because they didn’t receive training, and that they would have stayed if their employer had invested in them. These stats clearly speak for themselves, and the message is clear: training is vital for employee engagement, retention, and overall productivity.

Now more than ever, it’s crucial to be able to retain your talent - and investing in them is critical for any business wishing to succeed in such a volatile climate. So, what’s the best way to do this?

How to Retain and Develop Your People

It all starts with who you bring in: making sure they’re the right person, with the right skillset, able to fit in with your company culture well. And it might surprise you, but your training and development actually starts as early as the interview and induction process. This is where training needs are first identified and where employees start their journey with you.

Having a continual assessment process will also help you analyse how your employee is developing and engaging, how their specific training needs are evolving and how they’re aligning with your company culture. Weekly reviews are a good idea, because then you can refer back to the initial job specification to inform you on how things are going- both for you and for employees. This can provide clarity and help you to analyse skillsets that are required and might need developing.

It’s also important to approach this from a personal aspect too. If an employee feels invested in as a person and feels that you’re supportive of their own career aspirations, they’re more likely to perform well, to engage well and to stick around too.

Empowering your employees and valuing them as people as well as valuing them as employees is a fantastic way to ensure retention- so working on a personal progression plan should be a top priority for you.

How to Know Which Training to Provide

It’s a common concern for employers and knowing which training to provide to staff is one that you really need to get right.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development carried out a study of 3,700 UK employees, and found that 37% felt they already had the necessary skills to carry out more demanding work. The problem is that not utilising these skills means business are missing out. Workplace training could easily ensure these skills are maintained and improved upon.

Again, the interview stage is crucial here because this is a point at which you’re assessing your candidates and their skills, and already you can be identifying potential training that will be beneficial to them. Identifying their needs this early on means that you can implement the required training early too.

Another strategy to use to help identify training needs: appraisals. Every formal appraisal process needs a section on training and development, so that you can agree a way forward that matches both business and personal goals. It’s worth pointing out here that informal appraisals (weekly or monthly 1:1 meetings) can be utilised in the same way- don’t leave it all for that one annual appraisal, when training needs can occur at any point thorough the rest of the year too.

Another point to consider is the pace at which job roles and businesses are evolving right now. Businesses need to keep up with all the changes we’re seeing at the moment, and in some cases entire job descriptions will change completely- highlighting again the need to continually assess and be aware of new skill requirements for employees.

Recent research conducted by Go1 and Fosway found that 40% of core skills held by UK employees will likely change within the next five years- making upskilling even more essential if businesses are to keep up with the widening of skill sets we’re already seeing.

And with this in mind, it might be that investing in ‘soft skills’ is the way forward for your business. This means that providing training in skill such as communication and time management can make a huge difference in helping employees to build resilience and agility, which is crucial in being able to withstand the constant changes that are occurring. Looking beyond specific qualification and skills in this way can help to build a more well-rounded employee overall.

Talk to your employee to find out how they view their current skills, where they’d like to improve and what career goals they have. Having the conversation will help you to make the final decision on which training is worth investment.

Lastly, ensuring you’ve got the right managers in place to assist in identifying training needs is essential- this also helps to ensure employees are well supported too.

• Senior leadership teaching
• Internal training and workshops
• Peer to peer learning

All of these types of training can be set up easily within the workplace, drawing on the existing skills and knowledge that various team members bring to the workplace.

Identifying individual training needs can also help to keep costs down, ensuring you don’t go for a ‘one size fits all’ approach which sees the entire team receiving training which was actually more suited to just one or two employees.

That said, group training can be cost effective if its right for the team- it helps to get everyone on the same page at the same time and can result in more employees being upskilled at one time.

The Powers of Coaching

Coaching is different to mentoring and can be done peer to peer, which can be a really powerful way to learn. It’s a really useful tool to help you imbed learning in a personalised way, and can be fostered as a culture within your team, without the need for managerial input. Coaching also helps people to feel seen, heard and value and because of this it will improve retention overall.

We know that learning and development opportunities play a huge role when it comes to employee retention rates. LinkedIn reports that that a huge 94% of employees say they would stay int their current role longer if they felt the business was investing in their personal career development. The same study also found that 87% of millennials felt training and development opportunities were crucial in deciding whether or not a perspective job is right for them. And seeing as millennials are likely to make up 50% of the workforce by 2025, it makes sense for businesses to take note and step up with training to accommodate this.

Here at The Maine Group, we truly believe that investing in your people is the number one most important thing you can do as a business. We’re proud of the training support we provide, and as ever, our attendees say it best:

“I can vouch for this - in the middle of my EA course with Maine - really makes you think about how you currently work and how you could maybe adapt your processes and ways of doing things slightly for all-round gain. Useful and transferable takeaways and good biscuits too!”

The more you invest in your people, the better return you get, alongside a more motivated and happier workforce. If you invest in teaching, training and coaching, you will have a five-fold returning on training costs and a much better chance at retaining and developing employees too.

Get in touch with the team today, to find out how we can help you.