Employees Training as an Investment

The quality of employees an organization hires and their continued development through training and education are major factors in determining the long-term success of any organization. To hire and keep good employees, it is important to invest in the development of their skills, so employees can increase their productivity and contribution to the organization.
As a manager, it is critical that we know the impact of our staff is making on profitability of the company. Are your employees making you money? Or are they simply an expense?
The quality of employees an organization hires and their continued development through training and education are major factors in determining the long-term success of the organization.

To hire and keep good employees, it is important to invest in the development of their skills, so employees can increase their productivity and contribution to the organization. The most successful companies see themselves as "continuous learning organizations" always striving to better themselves and their employees through education.

There are many benefits from training and developing the employees:

Increased productivity. To ensure standardized high performance, employees need to be properly trained on how to perform their jobs. Training is not necessarily showing employees how to do each job, but helping them to acquire the necessary knowledge to perform the duties of their respective positions.
Assuming that everyone knows how to perform a specific task, and skimming over the explanations of how and why that task is essential will sets the employee up for errors that later will need to be corrected - causing excess work for other employees. Worse yet, if the problem is not caught right away, it will end up into a much bigger problem for the organization.



Decreased need for supervision. Employees who are adequately trained and cross-trained need less supervision, freeing supervisors and managers to concentrate on leading training seminars or building customer relationships. Plus, an employee who is able to perform a number of functions can be called upon to fill in during vacations, sick leave or when another employee leaves.
Training also ensures that an organization has qualified internal talent ready to be promoted as the organization grows.

Increased innovation. Once employees thoroughly understand their positions and perhaps have even been cross-trained on other positions, they begin to truly understand the organization. Many times this knowledge leads to process improvement initiatives or innovative product offerings.
However, training should not be done just for the sake of training.
The end results for an organization that is willing to invest in its people by establishing a quality training and development program will include better products, better service and better financial results. When management invests in its employees, those employees become a competitive advantage, leading to maximum performance for the organization.

Reduced employee turnover. It's a fact that employees want to contribute to an organization through a solid performance that is rewarded with recognition, pay increases and additional opportunities - including expanding their knowledge with training. It is when employees are not properly trained or challenged by their work that they lose motivation, become dissatisfy with their work and begin looking for other employment opportunities. The cost of turnover is significant and includes: Lost productivity; Lost knowledge; and Weakened customer relationships.
The extra expenses associated with hiring and retraining a replacement can add up and often are overlooked. A new hire frequently takes several weeks to get up-to-speed - which can cost the organization significant potential income.

Increased efficiency resulting in financial gains. The costs of training are a return-on-investment calculation. Are the money spent on employees training flowing to the bottom line? A study published in the Harvard Knsiness Review showed that companies that invested in their employees above the industry norm found their stock returns robust. This finding is in line with a growing body of empirical research showing that, when organizations make extraordinary investments in people, they often enjoy the benefits of extraordinary performance on a variety of indicators, including shareholder return.

The last two benefits above are in question for small companies in which they will have difficulties in keeping the best talent (after the training) to be with the companies and not having sidelong glance to a bigger and more prospective companies.
Guys do you have the answer or maybe you have the experience, please share with us.