If you don’t already, you should consider looking into retraining your employees more regularly to boost the business. This article will go over eight reasons, including increasing efficiency, as to why you should retrain employees from time to time.
Increases Efficiency
Firstly, the main reason that should be clear for regularly retraining your employees, is that you could see a major boost in your efficiency. This is because your employees will be better placed with transferable skills across the business, allowing them to be more productive. The main goal of this will be to improve standards within your business, which could see your profits rise massively.
Reduces Employee Turnover
Employees who have engaged with retraining are more likely to stay within the business than leave you. That’s because they will feel appreciative for what you’ve done for them, but it will also go further. Workers who are confused about their responsibilities or have doubts about how to execute a task may start to dislike their role.
More often than not, this is what leads to employees leaving their position and the company as a whole. This makes you have to look for new employees, which can be a costly experience. The costs come from having an empty position which could harm sales. You also have to factor in the costs of recruiting applicants, conducting interviews and training new employees from scratch.
More Adaptable Skills
The more an employee is retrained, then the more they are prepared for changing situations. It is perfectly natural for industries to regularly evolve; you just need to ensure you and your team are ready to adapt. This will be truer for technological advancements, where you will need to work with your employees to help them learn about the changes and make applicable strides to learn all about them.
The main goal should be to have your workplace running as smoothly as possible, and new innovative skills will be developed to make this happen. Consider surveying your customers to find what skills they find desirable from your employees, so that you can retrain in the right way.
Recognition Of Prior Learning
Some employees may be put off the idea of retraining, due to the fact they’ve recently gone through a process like this either with you or their past employer. They may also believe that extra training is beneath them, as they think they have what they need. You mustn’t dismiss these claims, as they may have a valid point.
Instead, work with them to find what skills or training they have had, and recognise their prior learning. This is a process known as RPL, and it’s a management method that helps you acknowledge skills that have been acquired through formal, informal or non-formal learning. If you suspect a worker has prior learning that is applicable here, then they may be able to earn a specific qualification without the need to re-learn certain skills.
This is agreed by the ASQA, which have standards and rules for training within vocational courses. For their trainers, they will be required to recognise prior learning unless a specific program says otherwise. This article to understanding RPL explains why you should gain more knowledge on the matter, from a multitude of perspectives. Whether you’re an employee, a trainer or a manager, you’ll pick up the skills you need to do what you do.
Benefits Employees
Having your employees undergo retaining will better prepare them for work. The skills they pick up could be beneficial to the department that they’re in, or they could be more general skills that will benefit them in other areas. In some cases, management will provide employees with training to help groom them into a higher up role.
These employees will benefit away from your work too. That’s because this will benefit their careers giving them skills which make their CV look much more favourable. Before doing anything, you should consider speaking to your employees to find out what they would want from an experience to boost their skills. You may find that some employees are content with where they are now, with no ambition to push themselves on.
If possible, try to change their mind delicately and incentivise them to push onwards. Retraining the workforce should not just be a benefit for your employees, it should boost the whole business.
Benefits Employers
As an employer or manager, you should be able to see benefits within your business thanks to employees being retrained. This could come in the form of extra productivity, or it could be having employees who can now handle the extra responsibility. You could also incentivise employees further and have them work fewer hours whilst being more productive.All in all, employers want to create a culture of appreciation within the workplace, with employees feeling more valued.
This helps them to work hard and feel happier for it. Training employees in skills that they want, with the main purpose being to make them better workers, will be appreciated by all parties. Knowledge is power, so the more you have a team of people who have the information and skills to make a difference within their industry, the more you’ll benefit.
Identifies Leaders
If you are training employees and helping them develop new skills, you may be able to identify more leaders and mentors that you could move up the corporate ladder. Finding leaders within your organisation is a natural progression of talent, and can improve all levels of the business. You may find that these employees you train may one day have the skills and knowledge to train others, continuing the cycle.
Access New Innovative Ideas
Once your employees have been trained and reskilled, they may be in the position to inform you of ideas that they have. These ideas could be used to help transform your business, with fresh ideas that you had never considered before. It’s always good to get a new perspective on things within your business, so try to promote this culture of open communication.