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How Employee Training Impacts Your Organization

March 10, 2022

When you offer employees training opportunities for personal and professional development, you build a learning culture that benefits the entire organization. Workers can develop a range of skills to achieve their career goals while you benefit from increased productivity and engagement stemming from employee training initiatives.

From the Learner’s Perspective

45% of exiting workers said they left because of a lack of learning or advancement opportunities. Inadequate employee training also makes the top ten. Both of these point to the fact that workplaces need learning initiatives to keep employees engaged and prevent them from finding better opportunities elsewhere.

When it comes to investment, the employee/employer relationship is reciprocal. If employees feel the organization invests in them, they will return that investment with good work and a positive culture.

Additionally, it's simply human nature to desire challenge and interest. Excitement is more likely to happen when employees have more than just access to training and knowledge. Not only will a culture of learning help workers enjoy their work more, but it will also better equip them to handle unexpected events.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back after a setback or difficulty. Agility is the ability to respond to (often unexpected) changes. Both are traits that employees must have in workplaces where change happens quickly. Training and development initiatives help them to develop these characteristics.

How Employee Training Impacts Organizations

It's clear that learning benefits workers and is ultimately good for the organization. Businesses that create and execute a robust enterprise learning strategy will also experience other positive impacts. These benefits extend far beyond the expected perks like increased efficiency.

The far-reaching effects of employee training

In addition to keeping workers engaged, there are other reasons for organizations to build a powerful learning and development strategy.

These include:

Increasing capabilities
Aligning employees with organizational values
Building a strong workforce
Boosting motivation and engagement
Creating a strong employer brand
Sharing knowledge
Fostering innovation
Improving processes
Creating a competitive advantage

Here is a closer view of how employee training can lead to these positive outcomes.

Increased Capabilities

While positive attributes, such as a willingness to work hard and empathy, are undeniably natural assets, they are becoming eclipsed by the value of learning. Today, knowledge can be relevant in one moment and outdated in the next. Without access to learning and development to keep knowledge up to date, other skills or attributes lose their impact.

Furthermore, when organizations invest time and money into professional development, they see a significant return on their investment. Companies with an effective learning strategy are more than twice as likely to achieve their production goals.

A Strong Workforce

Workers often stayed with the same employer for many years in the past. Training focused solely on developing the skills employees needed to meet the company's goals at any given time. Now, most workers don't expect that much longevity in the workplace.

Today, employees are only likely to stay where they are if they feel they're contributing to their career growth. Organizations that want to retain top talent need to balance their own training needs with workers' expectations for professional development opportunities.

Employee training impacts worker retention as well as helps companies attract new employees. If your organization offers excellent training opportunities, that should be a significant feature in your value proposition.

Employees Align with Organizational Values

When an organization builds a training initiative and makes access to knowledge a priority, it communicates its values and priorities. Employees know that their employer values professional development and growth, remaining competitive, and adapting well to change.

It's more important than ever for employers and workers to share the same values. Millennials and members of Gen-Z highly value working for companies that share their values. Also, the rise in virtual work has led to tenuous bonds between employees and employers. Brands that can get their team members to connect with their values are more likely to overcome work-from-home challenges.

Boosts Motivation and Engagement

There is scientific evidence linking learning and happiness. The effects of learning include increased self-determination and motivation. It also gives people a broader worldview and offers perspective.

When people work in organizations that offer them access to learning, they are more likely to be motivated and engaged. This motivation and engagement lead to innovation, creativity, and an increased willingness to take ownership.

Shares Knowledge

Relevant, effective, and accessible training breaks down information silos. The more people that have access to knowledge, the fewer teams or individuals are left in the dark. Democratizing knowledge also increases transparency and prevents anyone from becoming territorial about information.

Additionally, by creating a learning strategy that fosters knowledge sharing, you can foster a culture of empathy. When knowledge is available to all, teams better understand one another's goals and roadblocks, which leads to better communication and cooperation.

Fosters Innovation

Any organization that prioritizes learning will be better positioned to foster innovation. That's because good leadership, engaged talent, and a desire to learn are vital components businesses need to increase their capacity for innovation.

For examples of a strong learning culture, consider companies like Google, where employees have the time and resources to learn for their own development. Employee training impacts workers' sense of empowerment and encourages them to develop and present innovative ideas.

Improves Processes

When employees work at their highest level of competence, they spend less time dealing with crises. This leaves them with more time and resources to create better processes and strategies. Ultimately, it allows workers to improve customer experiences, boost productivity, increase efficiency, and create growth.

Creates a Strong Employer Brand

Your employer brand is the totality of your reputation, values, and standing as an employer. It's as essential to craft an attractive employer brand that builds a successful company as it is to formulate a compelling consumer brand that attracts customers.

When your employees have access to learning, they are more competent and better able to achieve results to reach your organizational goals. This improves your industry standing, which enhances your employer brand.

In turn, potential employees view your company more favorably. They also associate your employer brand with a culture that values their goals and development.

Promotes a Competitive Advantage

Unemployment is at an all-time low. At the same time, the current employment ecosystem has left many organizations struggling to find qualified workers. This has created a learning gap that can make it challenging to remain competitive.

Additionally, the cost and resources involved in onboarding and training employees often make it difficult to rely on new hires.

Instead, it is often more efficient and cost-effective to provide more training opportunities to existing talent. This includes offering cross-training opportunities that boost workers' skill sets and allow them to take on additional challenges. When this happens, leadership can better meet organizational goals and objectives by moving team members around as needed.

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How to Get the Most out of Training in Your Organization

Prioritizing employee training can impact your organization in many ways. However, the extent of any benefit you see will directly relate to the quality of any initiative and your commitment to it over time. Follow these guidelines to ensure that your company will get the most out of your learning strategy.

Make Autonomy and Access a Priority

The best learning culture empowers people and gives them as much agency over their development as possible. This doesn't mean that employer-directed, instructor-led training is no longer valid. Both are necessary to ensure that workers have the skills to do their jobs effectively and meet any required competency standards.

Still, while workers value the training they receive that allows them to do their jobs better, they value self-directed learning even more. That's because the training they choose and pursue on their own is likely to relate to their professional development goals directly.

Additionally, when workers have access to training, wikis, procedures, technical manuals, etc., they are empowered to seek the knowledge they need to solve problems and complete tasks. This can reduce frustration significantly.

Ensure that Your Entire Workforce Benefits

Before the pandemic, the process of delivering training was much less complicated. While online and video training strategies were absolutely part of the equation, corporate training was largely designed under the assumption that a significant percentage of workers would be present on site. It's no longer safe to make that assumption.

Training and training delivery methods that worked for your organization in the past may no longer serve your changing business model. To get the best possible impact, you may need to modify your learning strategy to accommodate a remote or hybrid workforce.

For many companies, this will mean leaning heavily on virtual training. If this represents new territory, it may help to learn the ins and outs of creating engaging virtual training.

Create Immediate Connections

Workers get the most out of workplace training when they see the immediate value and can apply what they know immediately. That's why it's crucial to connect trainees with the materials as quickly as possible by showing them how they will benefit from the knowledge.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to apply the principles of contextual learning. This is a training method that contextualizes learning content to be relevant to participants. The features of contextual learning include:

Encourages a focus on problem-solving
Aligns with employees' daily tasks
Is a natural way of learning for digital natives
Can be scaled to meet evolving needs

The organization also benefits because workers can better retain what they learn by applying it immediately to real-world scenarios.

Know What Your Employees Value

If your employee training initiative is solely centered around your organizational goals, you may not see the full benefits of worker engagement and retention. Instead, you are going to want to take a balanced approach. Consider that workers today expect training opportunities to align with their professional goals.

Communicate with your team members to learn what they value in professional development and what they need to perform most effectively. Then, ensure that your training and development strategy considers these things.

Be Prepared for Ongoing Change

There's no such thing as a static learning strategy. If the last two years have proven anything, it's that businesses must be prepared to pivot in the face of rapid change. Learning and development strategies that worked in the past are no longer effective today and will need to continue to evolve in the future.

Create Learning Pathways

A corporate training initiative is more than a collection of courses and knowledge base resources that exist independently. While workers can benefit from having access to task-focused training components that help them work efficiently and productively, they should also have individual learning pathways.

Learning pathways are curated and personalized training programs for each worker. They should align with each worker's current skills and career goals.

Additionally, this approach to corporate training lends itself very well to self-directed learning. Workers can participate in creating their learning pathways, which gives them a sense of agency and motivation. Encourage them to communicate their goals and complete assessments that provide insights into their capabilities.

Use Technology to Maximize the Benefits of Learning

You have created a robust corporate learning infrastructure. Now you need the technology to deliver it to everyone who needs it. To do that, your company needs a single source of organizational truth. Find whatever tool that is and make sure you have buy-in from the top down so you can maximize its effect.