How a healthy work culture can lower your employee training costs

US$90 billion – that’s how much US-based companies spent on employee training and development in 2017.

I was astonished by this figure,  and it made me think about how we can all improve our training and employee retention. In my experience, it always comes back to company culture.

For example, I recently discovered Etsy School. Employees at the ecommerce company run a series of courses where they teach each other new skills. The courses include everything from coding and sewing to dancing the tango and mixing cocktails. I love this idea because staff can learn a variety of skills and it brings people together in a light-hearted yet informative setting.

When employees are engaged with their workplace, studies have shown that productivity increases and the costs associated with training and employee turnover drop dramatically. These costs are some of the most challenging for businesses to overcome because training programs are difficult to get right.

Training programs often face time constraints, limited budgets, and a lack of enthusiasm, particularly when they fail to target employees’ individual limitations and opportunities for growth.

While many businesses are investing in vast, company-wide training programs, it’s worth considering how culture can do some of the heavy lifting.

In the end, a culture that focuses on individual needs and helping people grow might just deliver as much value as pricey courses and training programs.

Training will help your staff  – but only when it’s needed

At my company, JotForm, we appreciate that each of our employees has different peak hours. And because we respect their time –  both inside and outside the office – we try our best to keep normal working hours.

Therefore, when we offer employee training, the programs have to be both valuable and stimulating for everybody involved. We don’t want to waste a minute of our employees’ time. However, research suggests this isn’t easy to accomplish.

A study from consulting firm McKinsey & Company that surveyed 1,440 executives across a variety of industries found that just one quarter believed their training strategies benefited the company’s overall performance.

If we combine those findings with the idea that employees have less time for learning than ever before – only 24 minutes per week to be exact – it seems clear that we need to develop a responsive culture that serves individual needs.

For example, our company has grown to over 130 employees over the past 12 years, but by splitting our staff into small, cross-functional teams, we can respond quickly to the diverse needs of each person.

Every group functions as its own little company – independent and empowered to make decisions. And because we concentrate on the needs of each team, we’re not wasting resources by training the wrong people for the wrong task.

We don’t always get it right, but we do want our employees to feel like the training benefits them on a personal level. And by identifying weaknesses in our workforce and scoping out what’s required for upcoming projects, we can develop a strategy that simultaneously addresses both needs.

Engaged employees are less likely to leave

Richard Branson once said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

Create a culture where everyone can thrive

Develop strong support systems