Why Learning And Development Opportunities Are Important To Your Business’ Success

11th March 2019

Many companies are still not offering learning and development opportunities to their staff. Not only does this leave them falling behind a lot of other companies who are utilising it, but it can also be detrimental to a company. So why is providing learning and development so important?

 

Improve Engagement Rates

 

It has been reported that 87% of employees are not engaged in their jobs worldwide. This is devastating news for employers, as this could be damaging their work performance. Learning and development have been credited to help keep employees engaged and satisfied with their job. The UK L&D Report in 2018 shows that 94% of those surveyed say that learning and development were critical to their success.

 

Improve Performance

 

Employees who have access to training that can help them improve their performance are most likely going to deliver a better performance than those who don’t have this opportunity. Having this training can also help your employees address their weaknesses and improve. It means that you can train your current employees to take on certain responsibilities instead of outsourcing or hiring new talent, which can often be a lengthy and time-consuming task. Those companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by around 147% in earnings per share.

 

Employee Retention

 

Finding replacement staff can often be inconvenient and time-consuming, so keeping your current employees is valuable. Not having learning and development opportunities available can be why your employees are deciding to leave and move onto a different job. When leaving a position at a company, 25% of people state that it is due to a lack of training and development opportunities available to them.

 

Gain new quality staff members

 

Putting money into learning and development for your employees is also important to gaining new high-quality staff members, as Udemy’s study also found that 42% of employees say learning and development is the most important benefit they look out for in a new job.

 

 

It is no wonder that growing numbers of businesses are reinvigorating their commitment to Learning and Development strategies. This, however, is putting a strain on HR as they are often the ones who have to organise these programmes for employees.

Using HR software can be a great tool to assist learning and development and help your HR team stay on top of it all. Choose software that can track what courses your employees have done, create training event invitations and arrange and record any appraisals. Some software can even combine HR and payroll together, which can help your employees free up even more time to focus on other important tasks for the business and allows your HR and payroll departments to easily manage your employees and increase their efficiency.