Employee training is a planned set of activities that impart knowledge and skills to employees in order to improve their performance in their current roles or to prepare them for future roles.
Good employee training should always add value to both the individual person and the company. The business must have resources in investing in employee training while its managers should strongly believe in developing their staff. As it is difficult to recruit people with the right skills while competitors spend large amounts on training too.
Benefits of employee training
Major benefits of training employees include:
- More effective workers. Well-trained workforce can better meet organizational targets, hence improves business’s competitiveness. Better skilled and more flexible workers are simply more effective. Additionally, training helps employees to better adjust to change and cope with change by being multi-skilled. Employees who have a wide range of skills and capabilities are more flexible. Therefore, training makes it easier for a business organization to introduce change, e.g. introducing new products, implementing new procedures, etc. A company with satisfied workforce may well perform more effectively than one where this is not the case.
- Increased productivity. Training is necessary to keep production workforce operating at its most efficient level. Increase productivity means producing more products within the same period of time or producing the same number of products in shorter time. Improved competence leads to not having to do things over and over again due to errors the in the first round. This increases overall productivity and improves product quality. In the end, greater efficiency and better productivity help to reduce costs.
- Higher motivation. Training helps workers to develop in order to reach their full potential. The workforce becomes better motivated at work because they will now have the chance to make use of a wider range of knowledge and skills. As workers progress within the firm, their motivation and morale are improved. In addition, as workers become more skilled, they have improved chances of promotion. When staff feel valued by employers who have invested in them, this will not only help to reduce absenteeism and lower staff turnover, but employees will be less likely to want to leave a business that provides them with good training opportunities.
- Easier to recruit staff. Businesses that have a good reputation for training and developing their staff, find it easier to attract good quality workers, recruit new workers and to keep existing workers. It is assumed that offering a good training program may help business organizations to attract new members of staff much easier.
- Better quality output. As employees become more confident and competent in their roles, the quality of output is likely to increase. The overall quality can be greatly improved, thanks to having well-trained production workers who are effective and efficient, leading to higher quality goods and services. What is more, workers will now be able to product higher quality products due to improved know-how and increased motivation. Additionally, management training improves the quality of business decisions as well.
- Less mistakes. It is believed that training improves the quality of business decisions and reduces the risk errors. Competence training reduces the risk of costly mistakes related to product specification while health and safety training can help to reduce work accident rates. Moreover, workers with increased knowledge and skills can work independently which reduces supervision costs. Due to increased self-confidence, improved speed and less wastage, the business can achieve reduction in the costs of production in the long-term.
- Superior customer service. Training can greatly improve customer service. It is because developing personal skills such as assertiveness, conflict resolution, stress management, anger management, business etiquette, etc. helps workers to better serve customers as they will be more effective in their jobs when facing customers. Customer care training helps the business organization improve customer relationships, gain a good reputation with customers and increase customer loyalty.
Higher employee flexibility comes from improved morale, increased range of skills, positive attitude, increased output and higher quality.
Drawbacks of employee training
Main disadvantages of training employees include:
- High financial costs. Training employees is expensive. The costs of training typically come with many forms that the business will need to pay for such as the course fees for training, travel and transportation costs, accommodation costs, etc. In addition to that, the firm will need to pay for a cover (substitute) worker whilst person attends the training. And, if that is not possible, deal with loss of output whilst workers are being trained.
- Time consuming. Changing internal and external business environment faced by many firms means that workers of all kinds must regularly update and improve their expertise. Offering any sort of employee training will be time consuming not only for workers but also for managers. Effective training takes time to plan, execute and evaluate which often consumes a large amount of a manager’s valuable time.
- Loss of output. When workers are away from their daily tasks due to attending a training course, they will not be producing anything. Hence, the loss of output whilst workers are being trained can become a very serious issue, especially for manufacturing businesses with set daily targets. In some severe cases, the firm will have to employ someone else on a temporary basis in order to fill in for those workers who are away.
- Need for training the trainers. If a business organization employs designated people who will operate training and development services, run training courses, etc., it will have to pay their regular salaries, offer additional perks, etc. This increases the business expenses. This applies especially for businesses which deal with frequent changes in external environment such as legal changes or technological changes. For example, in case of integrating new technology into the business, training is required to provide workers with updated skills and knowledge how to use that new technology.
- Trained workers may leave the business. One of many reasons commonly given by firms for not training their workers is that these well-trained employees will then be ‘stolen’ by competitors. Obviously there is no guarantee that employees will stay at the business after gaining new skills, knowledge and qualifications through training. When this problem happens, companies can try to focus on motivating their well-trained staff to stay with appropriate financial and non-financial incentives.
If the costs of training are greater than the benefits, it is deemed to be financially unjustified. If the costs of training are lower than the benefits, it is deemed to be financially justified.
In short, the primary benefit of training workers is that it enables them to learn how to carry out their jobs to the best standard possible. However, the largest drawback of providing training opportunities is the financial costs.
