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You don’t have to look too far into business books, courses, and online advice to find many of the benefits of investing in training for your employees. Doing so will help boost productivity, create happier workers, and ultimately result in higher profits and a highly-skilled workforce. All of these things should be critical goals for any company, of course – but there are serious issues involved if, for whatever reason, you decide to go the other way and not invest in training at all. Here are some of the real costs involved if you fail to provide learning opportunities for your employees.
An unhappy workforce
Let’s start with one of the most important reasons for investing in training – it helps your workers to be happy. Unhappy employees cause all kinds of issues for companies all over the world. They are more liable to take time off sick, for a start, and even if they do get to work, there are often huge issues with presenteeism. When workers feel underused or take advantage of, motivation becomes another big issue, which, again, will impact your company’s productivity. All of these factors – and much more – will ultimately see your business performance levels take a significant hit, and profits are likely to tumble.
Higher costs
Some employers balk at the prospect of dipping into their pockets and training staff. But these people tend to forget that training is actually an investment. And they also forget that the costs of training are often far less than those of hiring new employees, who you have to train anyway, and can take years to get to the same level as the people they replace. It also brings specialist skills in-house, so that you don’t have to rely on expensive contractors. Manufacturing companies, for example, could send key employees to injection molding seminars which bring new skills into the factory, instead of shipping out entire product ranges to other businesses. For the sake of a few hundred dollars every quarter, surely it’s an investment worth making? Especially when you consider the real cost of replacing an employee or paying for agency cover could easily hit a five-figure sum.
Lack of innovation
When people learn new skills, they will be able to bring new ideas to the table. Work practices can be made more efficient than they were before. Product ideas and adaptations will be free-flowing – and maybe even cheaper than before. Ultimately trained employees know how to work smarter, and those new ideas they bring to the table could be the difference between your business blossoming or stagnating.
Lower profits
So, regardless of the costs of training individual employees, one thing is clear. Without that investment, your company can expect to endure lower profits – it’s that simple. Less productivity means you won’t be able to meet demand in an efficient way. Failure to bring new technology and fresh ideas will mean your business stagnates. And the cost of replacing valuable employees is a complete waste of money that reduces your profits by a significant amount. And that, pretty much, is why you need to invest in employee training.
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