Employee training costs money, and most business owners are trying to save money rather than spend it. Despite your desire to save money and keep costs low, it shouldn’t be at the expense of ensuring your employees have all the tools and knowledge they need to perform their jobs to a high standard. Otherwise, you might face some of the following repercussions.
Missing Out On a Return On Your Investment
Very few business owners understand the business cost of not training employees because they haven’t taken the time to run the numbers. If you’re aware of the potential ROI of offering adequate training, you are better positioned to understand how much money you can be losing by not providing learning and development opportunities for your employees.
Fortunately, calculating ROI is fast and straightforward once you’ve determined the potential economic benefits. This can be as easy as looking at the increased employee retention rate of comparable businesses that offer training and comparing those savings to how much you spend each time you recruit, hire, and onboard new employees. Once you have those figures, you can use a traditional ROI formula of [(benefits-cost)/cost] x 100). Anything above 1% is money you never had before, all by prioritizing employee training.
An Unsafe Working Environment
Trained employees are generally safe employees. They typically know the safest ways to do their jobs and abide by all necessary health and safety information provided to them. They also understand that when they perform their job in an unsafe way, they’re putting themselves and others at risk of illness or injury.
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However, employees that have received little to no training may not have the same knowledge. If they aren’t taught the correct ways to perform work tasks, they potentially contribute to the millions of reported work-related injuries and fatalities.
Unhappy Employees
Employees want to feel valued in what they do, especially when they make a considerable sum of money for a business and ensure it runs like a well-oiled machine. If you don’t prioritize employee training or learning and development opportunities, you’re potentially laying the foundation for many unhappy and unsatisfied workers.
While you might not feel like their happiness is your responsibility, it can become your problem when your employees fail to perform to your standards, no longer meet productivity targets, and don’t provide excellent customer service for your customers.
High Staff Turnover Rates
Most employees want to perform their jobs to a high standard, but a lack of training and guidance can sometimes make that impossible. When they aren’t given the tools or information they need to meet your standards, they can experience a great deal of frustration.
That unresolved frustration can sometimes lead to employees seeking job opportunities elsewhere and leaving your company. When that happens, you must once again invest a significant sum of money into hiring an employee who might end up doing the same thing.
Poor or no employee training might save you money in the short term, but it can often have repercussions in the long run. Prioritize learning and development and potentially reduce the risk of missing out on significant returns, having unhappy employees, an unsafe working environment, and high turnover rates.