Studies have shown this one perception to have an enormous impact on the success of an organization. It appears that there is a direct correlation between how a company’s executives view employee training and the overall success of the company.
Make Training a Priority and Watch Your Company Grow
Of the executives who see their corporate training departments as a cost center, only 59.4% recognize increased employee productivity from their training programs. Compare that to executives who see their training departments as strategic enablers of the business, where a full 88% report increased employee productivity as a result of training. Perhaps even more relevant is the increased revenue reported by companies in the study. Only 32.8% of companies whose executives view training as a cost center saw an increase in revenue. This is compared to 58.9% for companies whose leaders recognize their training departments as business enablers.
It’s also no secret that successful companies have a higher percentage of employees who report being happy in their jobs. The same study found some interesting statistics regarding employee satisfaction and the corporation’s attitude toward training. The levels of employee engagement reported among the cost center companies was 64.1%, compared with 82.9% for the business enablers. In addition, the companies who partner with their training departments to align business objectives say that training is a great recruiting tool. A typical response in the study was, “The employees we hire are very interested in our learning and development opportunities.”
Since it is apparent that companies who value employee training and who partner with their training departments achieve better results, why don’t more companies adopt this stance? Some executives say that they don’t see employee training as an immediate contributor to the bottom line. Others report that the payback on training dollars is too low and therefore not a good use of capital. This is a short-sighted view of training.
It’s obvious that in order for companies to be successful, they need to have a focus on employee training and development. The way some companies have found to do this is to align training goals with business objectives. By building employee training goals into organizational planning, a company can determine the highest impact areas for the business and design training to focus on these strategic imperatives. This alignment of business objectives with training will result in a more direct impact to the bottom line from the training initiatives.
Successful companies make employee training a priority. It has been shown to increase productivity, improve company morale and directly add to a company’s revenue growth. Aligning training with the business objectives of each organization is a practical way to develop training that will contribute to the growth and success of the business.
Reference
Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Services – 2012Transforming Learning Into a Strategic Business Enabler
