The learning and development process invests in the skills an employee can use to develop their career at a company. In this article, we discuss the benefits of learning and development so that your business can invest in your employees’ productivity in the long term, well beyond their initial training.
1. Lower Employee Turnover
Learning and development (L&D) is a major factor in employee retention since employees who learn new skills are more engaged in their work. This productivity allows them to advance further in the company, increasing employee satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates.
The cost of training a new employee can be as much as 6-9 months of a salaried employee’s pay. Therefore, fostering a work environment that is more likely to retain employees by investing in their development is both productive and financially practical.
2. Attract Talent
In the same way that learning and development lowers turnover rates by developing employees over the long term, L&D investments also attract new talent. Employees scouting for opportunities to grow in their careers take advantage of companies willing to invest in their development.
Rather than take these new skills elsewhere, employees engaged in an organization’s L&D process often stay in their current job to develop further, strengthen their work community, and move up in the company.
3. Stay Competitive
The new talent attracted by development programs will bring innovative ideas and higher standards of productivity to any organization. The process of developing employees ensures that their skills remain relevant for the current standards of the industry.
Keeping up with industry trends by helping employees refine their skills allows businesses to stay ahead of their competition.
4. Closes Skill Gap
It can be costly to get an employee’s skills up to date without the help of learning and development. Businesses need to close these skill gaps, not only to stay competitive but also to develop the specific skills needed for their operations.
One advantage of learning and development is that it can be used to invest in both hard and soft skills. Programs can be specifically tailored to a business’s needs to ensure that employees are learning the exact skills they need to succeed in their unique jobs.
5. Strengthens Company Culture
The broader reason that companies invested in learning and development lower their turnover rates and attract new talent is that L&D strengthens a company’s culture. It demonstrates the organization’s investment in their employees’ careers, which makes everyone more engaged in their work.
To augment this effect, companies can use learning and development to generate feedback from employees. This encourages further engagement by making employees feel empowered in their own development.
By turning an organization into a continuous learning environment, businesses can use the social advantages of learning and development to make their employees more productive by investing them in the process of becoming the best employees they can be.
The Takeaway for Businesses
Learning and development programs invest in a company’s future in numerous ways. By developing employee skills, businesses can lower their turnover rates and attract new talent by fostering an environment that drives careers forward.
In turn, this will make a business more competitive, closing the skill gaps that prevent it from reaching its full potential, as well as strengthening its internal company culture.
A learning management system like Qbic offers organizations a range of options to tailor their L&D process to their unique needs. Its learning modules help businesses save time, money, and labor on the development process while establishing a system that can invest in their employees’ learning even after their initial training is over.
