Amazon, the American ecommerce giant, runs a career choice program under which it pays for its employees' education - “up to 95% of tuition and fees - up to $12,000 over four years - towards a certificate or diploma in qualified fields of study.” It says “Amazon believes everyone should have the opportunity to learn new skills and build their career – whether that means at Amazon or elsewhere.”
Amazon rival Walmart U.S CEO Greg Foran says to the introduction to a similar initiative, “investing in the personal and professional success of our associates is vital to Walmart’s future success. We know training and learning opportunities empower associates to deliver for customers while growing and advancing in their careers.”
While many organizations take a more progressive approach toward employee education and development, there are concerns as well whether the employee would stay at the company after training and so on.
Gail Jackson, Vice President of Human Resources at United Technologies, an American conglomerate offers an interesting answer to that concern. She says, “we want people who are intellectually curious. It is better to train and have them leave than not to train and have them to stay.” Business news magazine The Economist writes in one of its special report on learning, “such attitudes are becoming more common” (among employers).
We live in a world which is in constant flux. Things are changing daily. The only effective way to keep up with any change is through continuous learning and improving yourself. This is why an increasing number of organizations are having a serious conversation around training and development. “The number of organizations investing in employee training and development has sharply increased over the past few years,” says Mofidul Alam Saikat, General Manager of Bdjobs Training.
A growing number of organizations now understand that training their employees is not only critical for the development of the employees but also for the company to do well in a fast-changing market. But that does not mean that this is a dominant trend yet.
A dominant number of organizations in Bangladesh still view training and development of employees as expenditure instead of investment. “This view that investing in employee development is a cost on the part of employers needs to change, says Mr. Alam. “We’ve found that training meaningfully improves productivity that eventually helps the company to improve per capita performance in the company.”
The benefits of employee training and development are many and varied. Here are 08 such benefits of investing in your people.
“Any great business is about great people,” says Mohammed Ferdous Yusuf, Chief Human Resources Officer of fintech giant bKash. “An organization has a great product, some brilliant processes in place and some brilliant ideas at work. The question is who runs all that? The answer is people,” continues Mr. Ferdous. “It is people who work day and night to keep the organization operational and for that, you are just paying them in the form of salary. Sometimes, mere money should work but most of the time, it does not because humans are complex being. Apart from money, they also seek cognitive challenges, satisfaction, long-term prospect of their work, development opportunities and many more.”
In order to keep your people motivated and capable of keeping up with the changing world of work training and development is an indispensable mechanism. The organizations that invest in employee training perform better, generate better result per-employee, and retain talents for longer-period of time.
We live in a fast-paced world. Industries are constantly changing. Old market leaders are going out of business replaced by new ones. It is important for a business to develop forward-looking strategies to stay relevant to a changing market and develop new businesses and product to continue to thrive. Training equip employees with new skills and ideas to tackle the changing market needs.
If you don’t evolve, you will be replaced in the marketplace. Complacency can kill even the once great businesses. By investing in the development of your people, you are moving forward always and charting a new path.
Training significantly improve employee performance.
Due to the changes in the market, often knowledge and skill gaps happen. Training and development investment in people allow to tackle these knowledge and skill gap and enable employees to perform at their best.
A lot of training that we offer at Bdjobs Training comes with cross-functional skills components, says Mr. Alam of Bdjobs Training, and an increasing number of employers are paying attention to this space. Cross-functional skills are critical for employees to deliver at their best. For instance, a salesperson with a deep understanding of data analytics can design a better strategy and deliver the better result, suggest Mr. Alam.
An opportunity to learn often improve job satisfaction of an employee and increases the chances of staying at the company for several reasons.
One of the sources of job satisfaction is mastery, our ability to do something with accuracy. Training helps people to develop mastery, eventually resulting in a better feeling at work.
Similarly, when a company invests in the development of people, it sends a positive message to people that my company cares about me and that I can plan a long-term career here.
People usually want to join a company that offers learning and future growth opportunities. When a company invests in its existing people, it helps build a positive image in the market helping it to attract new talents hence building a competitive advantage over the time.
As we discussed throughout this article, learning is imperative to success in today’s fast-changing world. When an organization deliberately invest in its people, it inspires an organization-wide learning opportunity in people.
Employers are investing in developing cross skills of employees and they are investing in people
As we discussed, many organizations in Bangladesh are now starting to see the importance of training and investing in their people and are already investing in the people development. However, the overall number is relatively slim and development efforts have a long way to go.
One aspect of this development is that more organizations should realize this importance of training and invest in people development. At the same time, these development efforts and training should not be seen as a one-off sporadic initiative, but as a regular necessity and part of the DNA of the organization, to help fill knowledge and skill gaps and keep your organization moving forward successfully.
There needs to be a deliberate strategy in place to develop learning and development programs around identifying skill requirements, frequency and how these training will be delivered.
Bdjobs Training, one of the largest training organizations in the country, has developed a strong roaster of trainers and a solid process to offer corporate/organizational training in Bangladesh. The company has been working with a number of organizations in Bangladesh where it delivers custom training and development programs to these organizations. If you are working on developing a training and development program you can consult with Bdjobs Training here.
(This is an editorially independent branded content prepared by Storylab, Future Startup’s in-house branded content studio, and commissioned by Bdjobs Training.)
