By Afraim Karim
In an era where companies are hiring Gen Y and Gen Z, it is essential for these organizations to provide something more intrinsically valuable than money itself. As the world becomes more dynamic in terms of job prospects with challenging industrial economy, the employees are highly interested in becoming more compatible for the current market than earning raw cash only. Employees look for willingness from companies to invest in employee development, as they would benefit from this for years to come, rather than only paying them to do a job. Investment in employees is one of the most effective ways to encourage employee loyalty. Organizations which choose to invest by facilitating growth and learning opportunities for the employees, benefit on all ends. This is reinforced through LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Leaning report, where they reveal that 93 % of employees stay in an organization for longer if their employer invested in their career progression through learning and development.
Granting the ability to adorn newer skills and enhancing the existing ones lead to the boost of their productivity and higher efficiency; as a result of which, the company has higher chances of flourishing. This article provides some further reasons on why every company should implement learning and development of employees within their hiring strategy and strategies on how to incorporate that within their programs.
WHY INVEST IN EMPLOYEES?
- Solve any possible limitations
Any newly hired employee faces limitations, either in terms of adjusting with organizational structure or perform the particular tasks assigned to their new roles. By training the employees, the organization can benefit by having well equipped employees with the ability to solve the tasks at hand without constant supervision. Depending on the job description of the employees, organizations should design apt training programs, or employ the use of pre-existing ones for certain skillsets, such as www.acuitytraining.co.uk/microsoft-training-courses/excel/vba/ for Excel.
- Self-Drive of employees
Employees are motivated and encouraged to perform better when a direct involvement of the organization with the employees successfully develops a connection. Through such training and development programs, organizations succeed in giving an incentive to the employees to perform based on their self-drive. Organizations are built on the shoulder of these employees and with high self-drive, the organizations can expect a good future ahead.
- Employee satisfaction
Investment in the employees should be done in a manner that the employees can learn and take something back for their overall development. Unless the employees connect to the development program and it is not relevant to their experience, these programs might fail for being unnecessary and tedious. Therefore, it is essential to have industry specific training and opportunities to grow network through seminar or conference participation. Employees gain higher satisfaction with the ability to build better network.
- Employee retention
Although satisfaction and self-drive ensure that employees stick to the organizations for longer periods of time, it is also necessary that companies understand why employees tend to leave an organization in the first place. With poor management & involvement and the lack of learning from the work discourage employees and push them to look for alternative. The primary objective of every organization should be to keep their employees hooked on tasks from which both the company and employee can be mutually benefitted.
- Higher quality product
A common perception for all services and products is that the quality of these services or products degrade with time. Have we ever wondered what leads to this wide spread perception? Why would a company want their services or products to deteriorate over time? It certainly is nothing but the lack of employee interest that leads to deterioration. To ensure consistent quality of products, it is necessary to keep the employees satisfied through incentives of investment and involvement.
HOW TO INVEST IN EMPLOYEES
- Cloud learning
In an era where almost everything is automated, the employees might not have the perfect knowledge to operate the automated system. Even if the employee is well acquainted with the automated process, enhancing further only leads to better performance. Programs such as Microsoft Excel should also be enhanced with better cloud learning for employees. Organizations can offer week long cloud courses for the employees to take up through which their performance can be evaluated.
- Soft Skill development
Although soft skills are known to be innate features of a certain personality, enhancement leads to higher benefits. According to a LinkedIn survey report, 57% of employers prioritize soft skills over hard skills, including leadership, communication, collaboration and time management. Through programs offering to develop soft skills, employees get more involved within the organization intrinsically.
- Micro-Learning
Throwing chunks of information to the employees often time causes failure of fully developed programs. It is vital that the organizations are aware to allow the employees absorbing the amount of information or training given to them without occupying their full day time. Employees are more willing to learn when it does not take up their free time and the learnings are disseminated in small portions, such that the employees can keep a track of the things they learn and apply it accordingly.
Making the employees attend 1-2 hours of programs or focused discussion on a regular basis can also turn into a bad strategy. Granted the employees remain occupied with tasks at hand, it is best to design any cloud based or physical program in short time, avoiding monotony of any kind.
We have far emerged from the era where employees could solely be satisfied through monetary compensation or external employee benefits. As the world becomes more dynamic, workers want to keep up with the change and continue learning wherever they choose to invest their time.
