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Corporate training needs to be an integral aspect of business strategy for reducing staff turnover and employee satisfaction.
Corporate training is one of the most important aspects of successful business strategies and organisational growth. And with its recent evolution, it has moved beyond training new hires, sales personnel and leaders. In fact, corporate trainers and development professionals are now considered strategic partners crucial to a business’s success.
Any business that wishes to survive market odds will need to engage in some kind of business training courses. Today, these training courses aren’t limited to simply leadership and management but extend to finance and accounting, human resource management, personal development, sales and marketing along with customer service.
When companies invest into each of these areas, their managers, supervisors and team leaders improve communication, enhance teamwork, and develop problem solving skills. Business training allows them to improve their relationship with employees and give them the advantage of adapting to a quickly changing environment.
Popular areas that corporate training looks into include the following:
- Leadership training aims to offer different training workshops and courses that build strong teams within the organisation. The focus here is to develop management skills that will allow candidates to take on advanced positions.
- IT training is found in almost every organisation with the objective of keeping employees up-to-date with market trends. Since computers are involved in many jobs now, getting employee skills up-to-speed is essential at all levels of the corporate ladder.
- Professional development training looks at all aspects of day-to-day interaction such as effective communication, negotiations, time management, and customer service to name a few. Employee training is a vast field that covers everything from employee onboarding and compliance training to upskilling employees on new products and services introduced into the organisation.
Like elsewhere in the world, business courses in Australia are also offered by business schools and corporate universities. Alongside classes, many corporate training programmes use certifications to boost performance. In-house certifications demand both coursework and competency measures assessed against predetermined metrics.
These certifications let employees achieve recognition and expertise in business results. A certified employee gets distinguished from their peers stands a better chance of consideration for different career development paths, high-profile project assignments or promotions. Regardless of whether the training is mandatory or voluntary, employees and management can get powerful benefits for the organisation. Here are six prominent benefits to consider:
1.Reduces staff turnover
Most of the benefits experienced by organisations that invest in corporate training inevitably tie in with reducing staff turnover. Statistics show that 1 in every 3 employees leaves the organisation either voluntarily or involuntarily within the first year. And an astounding 22% of employee turnover occurs within the initial 6 weeks of hiring.
While turnover does have a negative impact on employee morale and productivity, the longer-term effect is on company revenue. And then there is the cost of lost knowledge to consider. What makes an existing team so good at their job is their unique skills and knowledge that they have cultivated in their positions. When an employee leaves, they take their knowledge with them.
When questioned, the majority of respondents say that job-related training and development options directly influence them to stay with or leave a company. So, a company that invests in their employees’ training experiences a lower expense of retaining existing employees than replacing them frequently.
2.Closes the skills gap
Many organisations recognize that skills gap exists within their company. For many, this translates into investing a good 3-5 years of training to make their staff fully productive for the company. The process involves not only training and retraining but also educating employees and managers to grow and stay relevant in their respective fields. The strategic plan to address skills gap is to include corporate training in the company’s organisational agenda. Training sessions can target specific soft skills such as conflict resolution or negotiation. Or, they be more broad-based, such as learning different strategies for sales success or improving productivity through better time management.
Likewise, hard skills requiring specific knowledge and abilities can also be part of your corporate training line up. This can include training in computer skills, web design, accounting and finance along with other quantifiable skills needed for a job.
Along with the skills gap, corporate training can help eliminate weaknesses. Employees learn from previous mistakes and refine their critical thinking skills which enable teams to resolve issues more competently. This helps with improved performance and results in amplifying strengths and acquiring new skill sets.
3.Career advancement
Professional development training can help employees advance their careers. Employees usually feel more engaged when they believe that their employer is concerned about their growth and provides avenues for progress. This includes reaching individual goals while also fulfilling the company’s mission.
When corporate training is introduced into the mix, it provides employees with an ongoing mechanism to enhance their skills and knowledge. This can lead to mastering their skills, greater chance of promotions, and a higher likelihood of transferring to new or different positions. Such training opportunities can also directly impact the organisation by improving morale, yielding career satisfaction, motivation, and responsiveness in meeting organisational objectives.
Workplace settings that offer advancement opportunities also boost employee motivation. Knowing that hitting certain benchmarks can turn into promotions makes employees more inclined to work harder every day. Leadership training is a great way to go about this. This avenue introduces core concepts behind successful leadership and teaches navigating the various challenges of becoming an effective leader.
4.Gives a competitive edge
Whether it is a new employee who receives training to get familiar with the company’s mission, values, rules and working conditions, or an existing employee trained to refresh and enhance their knowledge, employees feel assured that training programmes will equip them with the skills they need to perform their job well. This improves the quality of employees and their skillset at an organisation. Achieving overall efficiency and increased productivity gives a business its competitive edge over the competition.
Businesses that invest in corporate training further advance this competitive edge by keeping employees engaged and promoting loyalty. As performance levels improve, current employees become better prepared for future leadership roles. Not only do training sessions finetune the existing talent pool, it also allows businesses to re-skill, upskill and even teach multiple skills to their employees. When existing staff can diversify their skillset, transition into other roles within the organisation becomes easy. In other words, corporate training can help companies create their ideal employees.
Also, companies that offer corporate training attract the best of the outside talent as well. Training incentives create a positive image for the company which definitely impacts potential candidates for future job vacancies.
5.Improves employee satisfaction
While most organisations strive for employee satisfaction, not all achieve this goal. But a company that invests in business training typically tends to have satisfied employees.
However, businesses that equate job satisfaction with monetary rewards alone miss the point completely. While it’s true that yes, money is a motivator on some level, it’s actually not the highest motivator. A 2014 report on employee engagement puts money well behind camaraderie, peer motivation, desire to perform well, feeling encouraged and recognized, having an impact, growing professionally, and meeting client and customer needs. Instead, the same report states that many employees would think about leaving their present employer if they no longer saw any growth potential in their professional skill set.
On the other hand, businesses that instil employee training on all levels give a sense of sense of confidence and security to their workers. Confidence, because employees are kept up-to-date with training programmes, and security because training eliminates weaknesses and shortcomings.
When employees feel well-trained in their workplace, they are comfortable handling larger workloads, tend to enjoy their work, produce better results, and are overall more satisfied with their performance.
6.Prepares for future growth
With a rapidly evolving landscape, productivity relies not only on employees, but equally on the technology being used. When businesses consider the fact that by the year 2025 the millennial generation is projected to make up 75% of the global workforce, they have to think about the way this demographic learns.
This is a generation that grew up with laptops, mobile phones, and social media. Not surprisingly, they have come to expect the same type of access to technology at work. Also, they don’t expect to be in a classroom to learn something.
As such, catering to this group of employees means delivering training that is instantly available. The expectation is to have access to learning whenever and wherever there happens to be time. To keep up with this pace, smart businesses look to classroom-based alternatives, although instructor-led classes haven’t disappeared quite yet.
Instilling corporate training that uses blended learning by combining traditional and online training offers the best of both worlds. Business training courses that can keep their younger workforce members engaged prepare themselves for the future and enjoy the collective benefits of employee satisfaction, improved morale, loyalty, competitive edge and career advancement all in one.
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