Following is a snippet from an Entrepreneur.com article. 1
‘Technology changes are dramatically altering the traditional role of humans in the economy and are causing us to reexamine our role as workers in the job market…it has massive implications for businesses and entrepreneurs. Jobs are more relational and interpersonal, requiring soft skills like empathy, humor and tactful communication. ’
Now, spend a few minutes reflecting on these questions:
- Would you agree with the above statement that technology has altered the role of traditional jobs?
- If you agree, then do you think your employees have the necessary skills to adapt to this change? Do they have the necessary skills to work and collaborate with a global workforce?
- If they do not, would you be willing to invest in a learning and development program for your employees?
If you are hesitating or have questions about why you should invest in the learning and development of your employees, then you are in the right place. Do read on.
You may have heard of this sentence – employees are the most valuable assets of a company . We do agree with this statement. After all, they are the ones who are either building or selling your product. They are the ones who directly affect your productivity and hence the ROI.
And there is another aspect, too – the one that is rarely recognized. From the top down to the bottom, your employees represent your company, its values, and its culture.
Hence investing in their learning and development is in your interest. It is the key to engagement, productivity, branding, and work culture. It helps your organization to grow and succeed.
Many organizations train their staff (both college freshers and experienced) immediately after hiring. Then it stops. There is no commitment toward a sustained professional development program beyond the annual compliance courses.
In this blog, we will discuss the benefits of learning and development programs for an organization.
So what are these benefits
1. Onboard new hires faster
Do you regularly hire fresh graduates? Or does your hiring include a mix of experienced and inexperienced candidates? If you have well-developed training programs, you can address the training needs of both these categories. Onboarding becomes easier and faster. And at the end of the program, you will have resources ready to hit the ground running.
2. Create a pool of resources with up-to-date skills
Have you ever lost out on a project because you did not have employees with the required skills?
When management starts planning and analyzing business goals and growth projections, they need to check if their employees have the right skills to help them meet these goals. A well-planned training strategy will help you assess the skillsets of existing employees and create custom programs that will help your employees upskill and reskill quickly.
Ramping up resources for a new project will be easy when you have a trained pool of resources!
3. Meet compliance requirements
Policies and procedures need to be uniformly applied across the organization. They help protect the organization, the employee, and, most importantly, sensitive information.
Regular training programs that meet compliance requirements ensure:
- New hires learn about your organizational policies quickly.
- Employees working in different locations will be trained to adhere to company policies and follow appropriate procedures.
Won’t that save a lot of hassle for you?
4. Boost Employee Retention
Retaining employees can be tricky, no? They too have needs and requirements. And sometimes demands. Some may want free food; some want communication expenses. Others may want a more relaxed environment. Some others may want to take training classes or take a course. It can be endless.
One area which you can cater to is to help them upskill and reskill. Many organizations have in-house and custom training programs. Others actually have ‘learning budgets’ and sponsor employees to undergo training.
Programs such as these actually make the workplace more interesting. It can motivate employees to stay with your organization, ensuring you have talented resources to meet the demands at work.
5. Increase workplace engagement
Monotonous work can be boring. Employees may lose interest or, worse, become dissatisfied with their work. What if they start looking for other jobs which are challenging? You may actually end up losing a trained resource.
So how will L&D help you?
Regular training programs help with the following:
- Evaluate skills and processes in your organization.
- Alleviate boredom and keep employees engaged.
- Help address issues like innovation, creativity, and problem-solving.
- Empower employees and help them contribute to the organization.
6. Streamline analysis and planning
Now, you must be wondering how L&D will help with analysis and planning in your organization.
Well, emerging market demands mean regularly creating a product or adding a new service to your business. Lack of resources with appropriate skills shouldn’t be the reason to hold you back from grabbing new opportunities.
When the upper management starts planning and analyzing business goals and growth projections, they need to check if their current employees have the right skills to help them meet these goals. A well-planned training strategy should also be a part of your planning. It will help you assess the skillsets of existing employees and create custom programs that will help them upskill and reskill quickly.
This helps to build a culture of planning and evaluating future opportunities with existing talent rather than recruiting new resources.
One study by Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) 2states that learning and development programs help organizations to focus on future business goals by preparing promotable talent.
7. Empower employees and drive organizational growth
Training programs that upskill or reskill employees mean you empower them. They will work confidently, welcome challenges, and ask for opportunities. It builds a level of trust between you and them. Besides, you will be grooming a new set of leaders who will drive organizational growth.
In fact, a study on empowerment and employee engagement by Forbes 3 found employees who felt a low level of empowerment were rated with engagement in the low rankings of the 24th percentile, compared to those who felt a high level of empowerment and were in the 79th percentile.
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Are you interested in creating custom learning and development programs in your organization? Then there is a method to do this without putting a strain on your budget – invest in a good Learning Management System (LMS). Some of them come in the open-source version and are free of cost.
So what is an LMS?
LMS is a software application that can be used for creating, managing, and delivering e-learning content.
With a good LMS, you can:
- Create a repository of content in the form of lessons and courses.
- Publish content in different formats like PDFs, presentations, videos, etc.
- Create custom courses by reusing the content.
- Track and manage user progress.
- Add certification and compliance courses.
- Create training programs to assess the skill set of your employees regularly.
If you are a CRM user, check if your CRM comes with an inbuilt LMS.
For example, we at Vtiger CRM have built the LMS feature to cater to the L&D needs of small and medium businesses. Vtiger LMS is free to use till 31 December 2022. Try it out now.
Learn how Vtiger LMS can aid you in implementing easy-to-manage training courses for your organization while helping you cut your training costs. Take a look.
You may also want to take a look at how you can:
- Use an LMS to create training programs for your sales team
- Use utilize historical data in a CRM to streamline training activities
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Ref:
1 – Entrepreneur.com > The pace of technological change is faster than ever
2 – SHRM.org > Leadership Development – The Path to Greater Effectiveness
3 – Forbes.com > 6-key-secrets-to-increasing-empowerment-in-your-team
