5 benefits of training and development in the workplace

5 benefits of training and development in the workplace!

These 5 benefits of training and development in the workplace could easily be called what super successful companies already know.

It really is this simple...investing in and developing your workforce is critical to long term success.

The hard part of this article is not coming up with the 5 benefits of training and development but trying to limit it to just 5.  :)

Before I dig in I want to go over a couple of key terms…

“Workplace” the real goal is not to develop the “workplace”...it’s to develop the people that work there.

“Training”... for any of you that have been to our Train the Trainer you’ve heard me say a number of times… you train dogs...you develop people. The key point to focus on is developing the people in your organization for they perform at a higher level.

Last, when you develop your team (employees) you’re investing in them. It’s not a one-time cost or expense, it’s an investment that pays long term dividends for the company or organization.

Here goes… 5 Benefits to Training and Development in the workplace.

Benefit 1

Retention.

With unemployment in the US at 4%, retaining employees is going to be critical to long term success. With unemployment at this low of a level it will make it harder and harder to retain team members.

They will start being enticed by $.25 more per hour or just the thought of the grass being greener with some other company or organization.

When you invest in your team members they feel appreciated, valued and important.

These are critical to helping them want to stay!

Benefit 2

Higher productivity, less errors and mistakes.

Training employees helps them to be more confident and prepared. This leads to being more productive and making less mistakes.

Think of eating out and the errors that new servers make because they’re not trained on the menu and what each item includes.

The problem is too many organizations wait to train people until they’ve been doing the job a while and they know they’re going to stay. That entire time is lost!

Often those customers that experienced the organization during that time are lost too!

Benefit 3

Better service delivery.

For those of you that don’t know my background, we have over 20+ years of experience helping businesses in the hospitality and resort industry measure, manage and improve service.

A few years ago I made a bold New Years prediction that scientists would find the customer service gene and businesses would do genetic testing for jobs that fit in the area of customer service and guest experience.

To the best of my knowledge it hasn’t happened yet, but you never know! ;)

When employees are trained they feel confident. When they are confident they are more comfortable delivering a great service experience.

People aren’t born with the service delivery gene so the skill needs to be developed in them. If you’re lucky, they come from a business or organization that has already started the process but the reality is that great service is not a destination it’s a journey.

Benefit 4  

Save money!

This might sound crazy when the figure of $1,200 is often thrown out for what it costs to train a team member. I have no idea how they measure that...afterall, training can be a few days all the way up to a few weeks.

The mistake I see organizations make all too often is they say they have 1,000 team members and at $1,200 per team member they’re going to be spending $1,200,000.00 (Yes, that’s $1.2 million!)

They see the $1.2 million as an expense not as a long term investment.

Reducing turnover saves the company money! See Benefit 1

Improving service increases sales and profits. See Benefit 3

When an organization sees training and development of the workforce as a good investment they see the positives and not just the “cost” of doing it!

Benefit 5

More engaged team members.

There was a recent Gallup survey that found 32% of employees are engaged at work.

I’m not a mathlete but that tells me 68% of employees are not engaged.

The sad part is I didn’t need the big brains at Gallup to tell me that. I see it everyday when I shop, eat and visit businesses. From receptionists that don’t even look up or greet you to servers that don’t come back to fill the water or heaven forbid you ask for extra hot salsa for your tacos.

When people aren’t engaged they just care less!

From a businesses perspective this is terrible. You want team members that care and are engaged with the guest so they make the experience positive and memorable. (Yes, negative experiences can be very memorable.)

By creating training that is fun and memorable you increase team member engagement because they see the company investing in them and being committed to them long term.

There you have it...5 Benefits to Training and Development in the workplace

Now for those that have read this far…

The key is not just training and development of your workforce.

The development needs to be engaging so it’s memorable and retained. These benefits all disappear if the training is boring and painful.

We’ve all seen death by PowerPoint… you want to develop your workforce, not see if they’ll endure hours of training torture.

Bad training actually de-motivates team members!  (Not sure how to make it fun and memorable? Post a comment or give me a call.)

IMPORTANT NOTE - Remember this latin phrase...Primum non nocere - First do no harm!

Investing in training and developing your employees in your workplace is money well spent.

So the next time you’re asked “why do we do all this training”...remember these 5 benefits.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention. It goes without saying that it means the absolute world to me. I hope this piece helped you in even the slightest bit and if it did, please share it with a friend that could also benefit from this.

Thanks for reading...

Positively Transforming Lives and Having FUN Doing It!

A single simple trend that will dominate America’s future…

Hyper-distraction

Here are the facts…

Average American is exposed to 5,000 ads or brand messages per day.

• Our attention span is down to 8 seconds. (It was 12 seconds just 4 years ago.)
• Emails with sentences are too long to read so we went to texting. 
• Texts are too long so now we tweet (140 characters or less).  But we don’t have the time or attention to read those so we’ve gone to #hastags and emojis to make it faster.  

Don’t shoot the messenger… I’m not in anyway saying this improves communication or the sharing of messages.

This trend is dominating us moving forward!

From a learning and development standpoint we know that “lecture” doesn’t work but I still see it in everything from onboarding, to team huddles and “training” sessions. Please take a moment and re-read the above facts.

With a hyper-distracted world, a person showing up and throwing up will have little to no meaningful impact long term.

I’ve seen it referred to as the “sage on the stage” meaning the person with the knowledge stands in front of the participants and shares the wisdom and knowledge that they need.

Almost 30 years ago when I was at Purdue that was the way “teaching” was done. You shuffled into a huge lecture hall like lemmings and feverishly took notes as the “sage” shared his wisdom. (Sorry, yes, 30 years ago most of my professors were men.)

In order to survive going forward that model needs to be thrown out.

When I see people playing a game on their phone, while watching TV and commenting on social media the idea of a person standing and talking at them is doomed for failure.

You see that, right?

I’m asked all of the time… how do we “engage” and improve “retention”.

I guess if it was easy people wouldn’t ask me all the time.

Here are few thoughts…

Start with changing your words to change your focus.

1 - Facilitator. We stress that it’s about facilitating learning and new ideas. By this simple change it helps to move from being the sage to being a partner in the process. Similar to “Guide on the side” concept.

2 - Participant. In order to engage and retain, people need to participate in their learning and growth. Think for a moment, if you were a strength and conditioning coach for a football team and you squat 400 pounds... does that make any of the players stronger?

Of course not!

People get stronger by doing it.

The more active people are in the learning process the more they retain and potentially use. People often struggle when I say good facilitators are “lazy”. The fact is if the facilitator does less it means the learners are required to do more and learn more.

This is a very simplistic example but if you have a young child and you “let” them make their own peanut butter sandwich what happens?

I know, they could make a mess, but what else?

They learn some basic skills and those skills can be built on over time to help them learn to make toast or maybe a PB&J?

The reality is the more the learner does the more they will learn.

Next, think about the words mandatory and obligation…

When training is mandatory or an obligation does that sound engaging, fun or memorable?

I understand that many times team members are required to have training on a regular basis for a variety of very valuable reasons.

What if that training was optional, just like working for your organization?

By simply saying that the experience is “mandatory” you create resistance, fear and reduce engagement.

Finally in the new reality of “hyper distraction” you want to remember this valuable and simple equation.

Enthusiasm + Entertainment = Engagement

When you are thinking about how you can help your team learn new concepts and ideas that are valuable to them look at how you can add enthusiasm and entertainment to the mix.

Lots of ink is spilled over “gamification” and yes I’m a fan but it’s not limited to that. Not everything needs to be a multidimensional game to create learning and retention.

My son shared the other day that in a class they were required to find a book, video or movie and use a different “lens” to view it.

What if you gave your team members a variety of lenses to look through and decide how the guest might feel based on the service provided?

What if one lens was…

• Single mom, 27, with two children and stressed by her bill
• Married couple with two kids in college
• Retired and divorced male with grown kids

Something as simple as looking at things from another person's perspective could be entertaining and engaging!

With the level of distraction we all are dealing with you also want to remember the simple concept of < = >.  :) (Not sure what that means drop me an email and I’ll explain it in old fashioned sentences.)

This challenge is a reality that we all face and there is no reason for it to end.

The key is being aware of it and approaching it in a new way.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention. It goes without saying that it means the absolute world to me. I hope this piece helped you in even the slightest bit and if it did, please share it with a friend that could also benefit from this.

Thanks for reading...

Positively Transforming Lives and Having FUN Doing It!

P.S.  Share your thoughts below! Always looking for a good discussion and sharing of ideas.

6 Onboarding Mistakes Smart People Make

Top 6 Onboarding Mistakes Smart People Make and how to avoid them…

Hiring the wrong people

I’m not a selection expert but I’m smart enough to know this. If you hire a person that showed up 20 minutes late for the interview and 15 minutes late for the first day you have a pattern.

There is no good reason to hire a person that you know is not a good fit and is going to fail.

Just because a person can fog a mirror doesn’t mean you should hire them.

Not cutting your losses fast enough

Often times I hear about a 30 day probationary period. During that time the company wants to see if the person is a good fit.

My view is simple...after 5 days if you don’t think they will be a good fit...cut your losses and start over.

Every day that you wait just creates more problems.

10 lbs of stuff in a 5 lb sack

I share this on a rather consistent basis because I see it all too frequently. People think of new team members as empty balloons that need to be expanded and stuffed full of information.

Seriously, think about the number of items a person hears during onboarding and is expected to remember.  It starts with “where to park” and “how to clock in” and it overwhelms quickly after that.

Remember that in 1956 George Miller wrote, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information".

When we try to expand and stuff and cram we’re reducing retention and moving from onboarding to torture.

Deadly Orientation

If you would please re-read what I shared above. Orientation shouldn’t be about how much can be shared it should be focused on what’s important, valuable and can be shared effectively.

If orientation starts from the new team members perspective it won’t be about forms and data. It will be about “what do I need to know to be successful today”.

This is a great time for less is more and letting new team members learn through exploration and not be forced into hours of lecture and thousands of PowerPoint slides.

Poor management onboarding

All too often management looks at new team members as a distraction from getting work done and someone else's problem to be taken care of.

It’s HR’s responsibility or it’s Training and Development’s!

The reality is new hires are very expensive and the best way to get a return on that investment is for management to lead and make a meaningful connection with them. Spend time interacting, asking questions and learning about them.

Set the tone of what they should expect from their time working with your organization.

Great leaders see this as an opportunity not a task or chore that they need to do each Monday.

Poor department onboarding

Wait until they make it 60 days. I have no idea if this is true or it was something that I saw in a movie but it always stuck with me.

The concept was that during the Vietnam war when new soldiers were shipped over from the US they would join their platoon, squadron or regiment and the guys that had been in the country for a while wouldn’t even try to learn the new guys names.

They wouldn’t even try to get to know them.

They did this not because they were rude or mean or didn’t care.

They did it because they knew that most guys died in the first 60 days. They were “trained” but they were not prepared for what was going to be happening to them and around them.

So it was a self defense mechanism that “why would they get to know a guy” and have the pain of loss when he’d often die in the next 20-30 days.

Logically I can understand that mentality.

Here’s the problem with onboarding… departments often do the same thing!

Think about it, if you’re the manager at a Subway sandwich shop and you know that the average kid you hire won’t last 30 days how much are you willing to invest to get to know them and make a strong and lasting connection?

If you know they are only going to be there a few weeks all you want to do is help them make the sandwiches with as few mistakes as possible.

If they make it 45-60 days now you get to know them because you could have a long term team member that’s going to show up and do what is needed.

The mistake is if you don’t get to know them and make a meaningful personal connection and recognize their successes as soon as they talk with a neighbor or friend that is making $.10 more per hour at Fried Chicken World they are GONE.

They feel no loyalty and have no connection so it’s very easy to keep looking and hope to find a better fit even it only pays pennies more.

This is the time to invest in getting to know them and make them part of the family so they feel a loyalty and responsibility to the manager as well the company.

Making a connection can be the difference between a long term team member and a never ending hiring and onboarding process.

Creating that connection could be just the solution you need to get off the hamster wheel of always hiring, training and hiring some more.

Lather, rinse, repeat is not a successful business concept unless you’re in the shampoo business.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention. It goes without saying that it means the absolute world to me. I hope this piece helped you in even the slightest bit and if it did, please share it with a friend that could also benefit from this.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. What do you think? Please comment below...or share it on LinkedIn