INVESTING IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR GREATER EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

CONTINUAL LEARNING

Spreading knowledge should be your goal as a workplace manager, and you should be encouraging employees to learn as much as they can. Evidence has shown that by providing an effective learning environment, you not only benefit your employees, the company’s effectiveness will also improve (1).

Each employee trained is also a node of information for other employees in the company. It is likely that an employee who recently returned from training will share the information gained with their coworkers. This will mean that training one employee is a very cost effective exercise, as it leads to the surreptitious training of your other employees as well.

EMPLOYEES WANT TO LEARN

One of the pillars of job satisfaction is that employees are confident they can perform the role they are in well. It follows then, that training an employee to perform their role effectively will also improve their overall happiness and engagement, and they are likely to stay in their roles longer. This will reduce costs in hiring, onboarding and training of new recruits.

A simple cost effective strategy to train new employees is by utilising a mentor program. Research shows that mentors benefit as much from mentoring programs as do mentees, so this is a two-for-one deal (2).

ATTRACTING THE RIGHT CANDIDATES

These days, reputation is on the radar of job seekers, and learning and development programs feed directly into a company’s reputation. The job seekers who know the company values, who can extend their careers and professional development with your company and who see themselves as the right fit for you, will seek out your company if the company values are clear. Attracting the right candidates is extremely important, as it avoids hiring someone who isn’t the right fit for the company who will leave quickly when they realise. The costs of this are obviously exorbitant, and therefore the benefits of attracting the right candidates in the first place are clear.

DEVELOPING FUTURE LEADERS

It is important to realise that these new recruits represent the future of your company, and therefore they should learn as much about the company as possible. Therefore, the use of training programs such as mentorship, cross-training and management training can be helpful in succession planning. You will provide them will information on how to balance the needs of the organisation with those of the clients, making them better decision-makers for a thriving company.

Hence, it is clear the value of training and development programs in investing in your new employees. Not only will they be more engaged, more productive workers, they will be working towards becoming effective decision-makers as the future of the company.