8 Fantastic Reasons to Train Employees from Hire to Retire

You’ve spent months searching for, recruiting, and interviewing talent. Finally, you’ve found the perfect person for the role. But even the most experienced professionals need to get up to speed on your company’s unique systems, software, and processes.

Fail to offer comprehensive, ongoing training, and you may find yourself with an unhappy employee—or worse, another vacancy. Employee training isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a crucial tool for recruitment and retention.

Training courses and programs can boost productivity and ensure a smooth onboarding process, leading to higher employee satisfaction and better company performance. On the flip side, neglecting employee training can lead to dissatisfaction and a decline in your organization’s overall success.

BambooHR offers plenty of support and ideas for onboarding and employee engagement. In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of training and development for organizations of any size. Discover eight key benefits and the various methods to deliver effective training to your employees.

8 Employee Training Benefits

Nearly all new hires expect training on company tools and software (97%), an overview of employee guidelines (97%), and an introduction to the company’s mission and values (96%) as part of the onboarding process.

But training shouldn’t stop there; the benefits of training extend well beyond the new hire period. According to research from LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report:

• Offering learning opportunities is now the top employee retention strategy for organizations.
• 7 in 10 employees feel more connected to their business when they have access to learning opportunities.
• 8 in 10 people believe that learning gives their work more purpose.

Still not convinced? Let’s dive deeper into eight more reasons training and development programs can be instrumental in your organization’s success.

1. Increase Employee Productivity

Employee mistakes can mean major losses. Call center operator didn’t follow the script with a customer? Marketing analyst doesn’t know Excel functions and wastes time? These are simple but costly issues.

Properly training your employees (along with minimizing distractions and taking breaks) helps mitigate these problems. Improved production quality, advanced business communications, increased sales productivity, better service—all this can be achieved through both in-person and online training for employees.

2. Save Company Knowledge

Consider rethinking your knowledge management strategies. For example, create databases, online courses with exams (on your product, on typical client objections, etc), and video tutorials (on advanced features of your product, how to input data into CRMs, etc).

3. Align Business Processes

Without clearly defined and explained procedures, employees can waste a lot of time on unnecessary activities. Standardize processes to guarantee that all staff members stick to the same standards (e.g. answering all emails in 24 hours) and apply the same tools and techniques where applicable. A standard operating procedure (SOP) can be a helpful tool to simplify this process.

4. Make the Most of Employee Onboarding

Employee onboarding isn’t just necessary for the success of your organization—it’s also something new hires expect. Considering the time, money, and resources you invest in the recruitment and hiring process, it’s well worth onboarding them effectively. The worst strategy would be to leave them to sink or swim without any guidance.

Whether in person, through a series of onboarding videos, focused goal-setting, or automated onboarding, remember: investing in onbarding is investing in your employees’ success from the start and improves the employee experience.

5. Increase Loyalty and Decrease Turnover

Satisfied employees are productive employees. Among the many benefits of staff training, it can increase wellbeing, lower absenteeism, and reduce mistakes.

Training can also help you retain talent and boost employee engagement by showing your employees there’s room to grow at your company. More than half (53%) of Gen Z workers feel learning will help them explore other career paths within their organization.

6. Encourage Autonomy

Another advantage of training is empowering and building trust in your staff. Training helps ensure your teams feel self-sufficient and can take ownership of their work. This requires practice developing good leadership on the manager’s part, as well.

It may feel counterintuitive, but the less micromanaging you do, the more your team can thrive. Remember to foster a culture of transparency so people are comfortable asking questions or sharing concerns when necessary, and accountability to combat weaponized incompetence.

7. Keep Up with New Technologies

Regularly updating training and development programs could help your staff to keep pace with cutting-edge technologies.

For example, artificial intelligence (AI) is a key priority for many employees. In fact, most desk workers (80%) who’ve tried AI at work report improved productivity. Providing AI training and a comprehensive corporate AI policy shows your employees your investment in their success and their future at the company. Helping your employees upskill can also assuage fears that AI will take their jobs.

8. Ensure Internal Mobility

Training employees in a standardized way can make it easier to promote from within your company. Internal recruiting (promotions, transfers, and temp-to-permanent) is helpful in a number of ways. In terms of training, it’s often easier and faster to onboard internal hires because they’re already in your systems and usually familiar with the software they’ll use in the role. This means that while they’ll still need training, you won’t need to start from scratch.

Different Types of Employee Training

You can mix and match different types of corporate training, depending on employees’ roles and career phases. Here are just a few examples to get you thinking.

Training Opportunities for Different Roles

• Management. As employees progress into more senior roles, you can upskill them with managerial training. Management and leadership aren’t the same thing, so this training should aim to help new managers become great people leaders. This could cover everything from communication and time management to performance management and conflict resolution.
• Sales. Consider how your salespeople and marketing teams could promote products and services more effectively. For example, this might involve presentation or pitch training, guidance on maintaining strong customer relationships, or tips on crunching the numbers.
• New hires. Training for brand-new employees might include everything from a basic office tour to instructions on how different software and internal processes work. Get off on the right foot with a solid onboarding strategy!
• Human resources. Dedicated training modules could help improve employee performance within your HR team, too. You can keep HR staff up to date with new legislation, workplace safety rules, and company policies.

Training Options for Different Career Phases

• Employee onboarding. This kind of training should offer a useful intro to your business, with essential information that new starters can build upon. Onboarding should take about a year, but it isn’t just for new hires!
• Upskilling. The purpose of this training is to ensure your employees don’t stand still. As technologies and working practices evolve, a focused but flexible professional development strategy equips them with the skills to keep pace.
• Reskilling. As employees move from one department or role to another, it’s important to reskill them in their new jobs.
• Cross-training. Teaching employees how to do different tasks beyond their usual role could create more flexibility in your workforce and support career development. Mentorship, collaborative learning, and knowledge sharing via standard operating procedures (SOPs) are examples of good cross-training.

Continue Your Employee Training Journey

Employee training can prove invaluable throughout a person’s career. Learn how BambooHR can help you integrate employee training throughout the employee life cycle, from onboarding to engagement strategies.