Free eBook: Overcoming Business Challenges

Free eBook: Overcoming Business Challenges
tomertu/Shutterstock.com
Summary: Every corporation faces business challenges of various types. Employee engagement and employee turnover are some of them. BizLibrary’s free eBook Overcoming Business Challenges highlights effective strategies to overcome such obstacles. In this article, I’ll present what this comprehensive eBook has to offer.

Important Information About The eBook Overcoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover

Turnover is a universal issue for nearly every company regardless of size or industry. It’s costing organizations in the U.S. alone billions of dollars. The shift in the mindset of the modern worker from company loyalty to culture fit is prevalent. As a result, employees are more likely than ever to jump ship when the going gets too tough. Organizations are looking to save money in any way they can. Now more than ever the cost of losing even one employee can be devastating, even disastrous. Overcoming business challenges of that type is crucial to any corporation and that's what the free ebook Overcoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover is going to be targetting.

The cost of employee turnover varies according to the employee’s annual earnings. The cost of losing an employee earning under $60,000 is between $15,000-$25,000. If an employee makes $60,000 per year, losing them would impact the company at a level of $30,000-$45,000. A highly trained executive making $120,000 and leaving the company would result in up to $255,000 in damages. This cost comprises a plethora of factors. These include interview expenses, training and onboarding, productivity of new hires, advertising cost, impact on morale and lowered engagement.

Get the free eBook Overcoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover
Download this free eBook and learn how to start reducing employee turnover today!

Employee Engagement Is A Symptom Of A Bigger Problem

Organizations are often quick to blame their employees for not being engaged. Companies try to implement initiatives to “increase engagement.” These initiatives are certainly not bad on their own. However, they may not be addressing the root problem of engagement and overcoming business challenges of that nature. Things like flex hours, happy hours and better maternity leave policies can do great things in attracting top talent. Retaining that talent, though, can be a different story. Perks can definitely set the tone for a great company culture. However, they don’t have the ability to make your people feel engaged and appreciated.

So, how do we make our people feel engaged and appreciated? It starts from the top down and from the individual up. What does this even mean? It means that managers need to realize that turnover is a culture issue and management sets the tone for culture. It also means that implementing these changes starts with focusing strongly on developing the individual in order to see organizational results. Head spinning yet? Fortunately, the solution is simpler than you may think.

Why Employee Training Matters To Employees

So you’re thinking to yourself “I’m letting these people set their own hours and I pay for six weeks of maternity leave. Why do they keep leaving?” As we stated before, yes, these things are good in the modern workplace, but what many employees are looking for and not getting from their employers are career development opportunities. According to the Harvard Business Review, there were some large gaps between what employers do to help them grow in their jobs, and what employees would prefer to see done.

So, why the discrepancy? Employers often view training as costly and time consuming. If budget is not an issue, then often the focus of the program doesn’t have enough to do with individual career development. The idea of getting this granular with each individual on each team may seem overwhelming. Training has moved online and the range of content that’s available has expanded. As a result, getting a program in place for individual employee development has never been easier. Let’s address common employer issues with training programs.

Cost

Many employers don’t provide training due to the cost and the worry that employees will take the training and leave. This creates a cycle of turnover. Employees see value in training and development. In addition, they consider it extremely valuable to the design of their ideal career path. If you look at the cost of turnover we outlined previously in the free ebook fOvercoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover, you’ll see that training costs just a fraction of what turnover is costing your organization each year.

Overcoming business challenges such as this means developing top talent in their positions to meet company goals. Then you can’t afford not to include training in your annual budget! One of BizLibrary’s clients, The Go Solution, was able to use our online training solution to decrease turnover by 87% and significantly reduce negative feedback from exit interviews. In addition to mitigating turnover, The Go Solution was able to increase closing rates by 7% since the program was implemented.

Time Commitment

Training takes time. Managers worry about the financial ramifications of taking their workers off the job for the time it would take to do “personal development” training. But the research has shown that without taking the time for training and development you’re actually losing time because of increased turnover. The reality is, training doesn’t have to be an extremely time-consuming endeavor. With the rise of micro-learning, employees can participate in development activities by watching videos ranging from 1-10 minutes in length. Most of these videos are also available on mobile devices, making accessibility issues a thing of the past. Bottom line, if you won’t take the time to develop your employees, especially your top talent, they’ll find someone else who will.

How Employee Career Development Benefits The Organization

You’ve heard the old quote “What if we train them and they leave? What if we don’t and they stay?” Individual development of employees does more than just give them a sense that the organization cares about their development and values them, thus decreasing turnover. Employees who are developed are higher performers and gain critical attributes. These attributes help them succeed in their role at your organization, and in future roles you may have for them down the line. Not only are you investing in an individual employee’s career, you’re also investing in the future of your company.

Another of BizLibrary’s clients, Ivie and Associates, has used employee training to drastically reduce their turnover, putting it at the lowest it’s been in over a decade. Because of the training and development they’ve provided their employees, the company has also noticed an increase in employee engagement and productivity. Since implementing the Ivie Learning Center, employees are more focused, accountable, happier and engaged within their teams. This proves that developing individuals is mutually beneficial!

Getting Started Using Training To Reduce Employee Turnover

Tackling turnover at your organization may seem like a daunting task with many components to it, but we’ve seen organizations implement employee training programs and reduce turnover quickly and effectively while simultaneously improving culture, engagement and overall employee happiness. These 6 steps will help you implement a training program that actively works to reduce employee turnover.

  • Align Training With Company Culture
    As an organization, what cultural behaviors do you want all employees to share? Identify these and design training to help advance these skills.
  • Choose A Solution With Content That Addresses Every Need
    You’ll want to make sure that the content you choose contains training that aligns with company culture and develops necessary hard and soft skills, but you’ll also need to ensure that the scope of content is broad enough to include lessons that develop individuals in their careers.
  • Use Microlearning
    For best results, we recommend heavily utilizing content that is short and easy to digest. Research shows that employees only get 7 minutes at a time uninterrupted and make sure your training reflects your employees’ reality.
  • Get Leaders On Board And Excited
    You can implement the best training solution in the world, but if employees can’t see the enthusiasm of their leaders, chances are they won’t adopt a new initiative.
  • Make Time For Learning
    Once employees are provided with resources, make sure to give them time to use them. It’s great to reward employees for actually doing training.
  • Commit
    Training is an investment and a commitment. It takes time and persistence but the payoff is worth it both culturally and in terms of ROI.

Employee training is a vital step in reducing employee turnover as previously stated inBizLibrary's free ebook Overcoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover. If you don’t already have an employee training program in place, now is the time! If you do already have a program in place but aren’t seeing the results you need, it’s never too late to switch focus, align with company goals, switch providers or add content geared toward developing your employees.

By prioritizing the development of your employees and committing to their success, you’re ensuring that your organization will meet its goals, reduce turnover and ultimately, save money. BizLibrary’s free eBook Overcoming Business Challenges: Employee Turnover constitutes an invaluable tool towards that purpose.