Partner Article

4 Reasons You Should Invest in Employee Development

The demands and stress of running of day to day business often means that employee development is not high on the agenda. But only dealing with issues short term and consistently playing the recruitment game is not an efficient long term solution. There are a number of ways that a solid employee development program is going to help your business, and ultimately mean that you won’t have to firefight anymore. With a great team behind you, you can relinquish control and begin to enjoy the benefits and flexibility that well trained and assertive team can provide.

Here we list 4 ways that employee development is going to help your business.

It attracts great talent

Employee retention can be both expensive and challenging – but so is the recruitment process. So in order to combat this, it makes good business sense to implement a solid development program.

This will help current employees, but also make your company an eye-catching option when it comes to attracting fresh talent. Employee development is often seen as a benefit when it comes to listing the pro’s and con’s in the hunt for a new position. Providing opportunities for your employees to development in their professional and personal lives gives you a competitive advantage over similar positions and salaries.

It also helps to establish loyal employees that are set to stay with your company for the long haul. If your employees feel that you care about their development, they feel valued and they become loyal, fully investing in the business and its success.

Your reputation as an employer will sky rocket, why wouldn’t it? You care enough to provide training and development schemes for your staff. A great reputation attracts great talent, it also provides a good reason for customers to stay with you and prospects to do business with you.

Employee development programs will attract candidates that actively want to better themselves and their career – these are the type of people that you WANT working for you.

It creates employees that can progress

When the time comes to recruit for management level positions, recruiting internally is a great idea. They will already be familiar with the day-to-day business running, and already have built relationships with customers and colleagues; the problems arise when employees are promoted when they aren’t ready for such a position, but a development program can aid you in combatting these common issues.

By training your present employees for future promotion, you will quickly be able to identify strengths and weaknesses and provide adequate training that targets the areas for improvement. As well as developing employees for future promotion, recognising and developing weaknesses will also improve current business.

It’s profitable

Recruitment is an expensive process. In fact, a report by Oxford Economics reported that replacing employees can cost a staggering £30,614 for each employee. This is made up of 2 main factors – the cost of lost output and the logistical cost of recruiting and absorbing a new employee. The report found that it takes an average of 28 weeks for an employee to reach their ‘optimum productivity level’ – amounting in a cost of over £25,000. Other costs are made up of recruitment agency fees, advertising the role, HR processing time and management time spent interviewing.

Keith Potts, MD of Jobsite.co.uk comments, “For any business, saving time and money is important. This is doubly so for small businesses where these resources are even more limited in supply. Hiring the wrong people is costly and can be seriously detrimental to the productivity – and even the future – of small and medium companies, particularly in the current economic climate.”

An employee that is engaged, confident in their role and highly trained is going to be a long term investment; as they come more efficient they will save the business money and be a catalyst for it becoming more profitable. Employee development programs are good for the business bottom line, having the potential to increase output, sales and profit.

It engages employees

You know that bored employee that you are worried about? You are right to be concerned. Boredom can quickly development into something more sinister. Mild boredom can turn into a negative attitude that can spread to other employees and customers – damaging the businesses reputation, productivity and profits.

Presenting a promising future for employees is one thing, but actually providing them with the tools that will make it happen is something else. Keep employees engaged with interesting training, events to look forward to and individuals that are going to inspire and motivate them. Breaking up the daily grind to prevent boredom is welcomed, but showing employees that you value them and want to invest will earn you loyalty and respect.

Chris Hardy from Xchange Training explains, “We provide a number of training course to individuals and well known corporations. Offering onsite course means that you can tailor to software and processes that are used on the premises and means less disruption to work schedules. There has been a rise in employers deciding to improve their employee’s digital skills as the world of business is increasingly taking place almost exclusively online. As well as benefiting the employer, they are transferable skills that the employees can take forward in their careers.”

Yes, it may mean putting in a few hours to create and implement or even taking yourself out of the business, meanings proceedings slow for a while. But be assured that the time and money time spent now will pay of dividends long term.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca Moore .