The ROI of Expert Training

Posted by Des Sinkevich on October 28, 2020

In business, for a program or plan to be considered a success, it needs to show positive return on investment (ROI). With sales metrics and revenue benchmarks, it’s fairly easy to measure the return and impact of your strategy. However, for strategies and plans involving human capital, getting a clear picture of how your investment in workforce training effects the business isn’t quite as straightforward. People are variable. But it’s also true that people – human capital – are essential to growing your business, revenue, and improving retention rates. As a necessary investment for employers, understanding the impact of effective workforce training can help you build a strong program with positive results for your employees and business.

While some low-level training is essential to get an employee ready to effectively do their job, more in-depth training can often be sidelined by employers. If employees can efficiently and correctly perform the job tasks they were hired for, what’s the point of spending more on additional education? But not investing in legitimate workforce development can, over time, negatively impact all aspects of the business from culture to revenue.

Consider the cost of high turnover within your organization. Whether you’re in a high-turnover business like retail or are operating in a more stable industry, turnover, like taxes, is something you know will happen every year. While some turnover is inevitable, a steady stream of it over time can impact your revenue. On average, it can cost upwards of $4,129 to recruit and hire a new employee. Multiply that several times and you’re looking at a slow –bleed loss of income.

Besides taking a hit in revenue, turnover adds additional stress to current employees and company morale. If you’re hemorrhaging workers, employees take notice and may start to question what, exactly, is leading so many others to leave the company. Those who stay are then often asked to add training a new recruit to their full list of tasks, taking away from productivity. Cyclically hiring and losing employees and losing employees is a stressor that impacts all aspects of the business, even up through client satisfaction.

We know that training, at the most basic level, is needed in every role and company. When a new hire comes on, acclimating them to standard processes, job duties, and the tools at their disposal is the first step in ensuring your employee accomplishes the goals set out for them. As the employee learns and grows throughout the beginning of their career with the company, further training is often necessary to allow them to take on new positions, promotions, and become an asset to their employer.

Besides ensuring an employee can handle the work they’re given on a regular basis, providing in-depth training to your workers builds career confidence and motivation. It also allows you, as the employer or hiring manager, to create a strong, developed talent pipeline within the company that can feed into high-level or more skilled roles.

Effective, long-term training can

• Improve performance. An employee who knows what their job duties are and has the tools to perform those duties well is confident in their work, improving their performance which drives accelerated company performance- meaning training is good for business.
• Increase loyalty or motivation. If someone is doing well in their job and that is being recognized by managers, they’re more likely to stay motivated to continually meet that high level of performance. Providing training opportunities also increases employee loyalty – if an employer is willing to invest in their career growth, there’s more incentive to stay with that company.
• Decrease turnover. Turnover can be financially and culturally detrimental to a company. It’s estimated that hiring a new person to fill a vacated role can cost the employer as much as 1.5 to 2 times the annual salary of that position. Others calculate the loss in revenue as an average of $4,129 for each employee. From recruiting costs to the length of time it takes a new hire to acclimate to the role, it all adds up. Through offering workforce development and training opportunities, turnover that ultimately impacts revenue can decrease dramatically.
• Create a talent pipeline. Recruiting can be costly, especially for higher paid roles. After recruitment, the onboarding process can then take up to 90 days, meaning that the new hire won’t be as productive while they’re learning the ropes of the role. By offering training and development opportunities, you can reap all the other benefits while also creating a pipeline of skilled, knowledge workers that can take on new roles and promotions.