The Importance of Employee Development

Businesses are currently on the back-foot in the UK, after a disastrous year for the nation economically speaking. Marked increases in supply and overhead costs have heavily impacted profitability, and seen many businesses fail to stay the course. While there are no simple solutions to the various issues leading to a forecast recession, there are still variables that businesses can influence – and employees are arguably the most important variable of all.

Employee development describes the active involvement of an employer in the training, upskilling and mentorship of existing staff. Employee development programmes need to be comprehensive and well-founded in order to provide real benefits to a given business – but the benefits they provide are extremely significant. What are these benefits, and why should businesses more actively consider employee development programmes?

Employee Retention, and Profitability

First and foremost, employee development improves employee retention figures. Essentially, employees that do not see investment from their company, or any proper routes to progression within it, are more likely to leave in search of better prospects. By actively investing in employee development, employees will be more satisfied with their place in the business and less likely to leave.

Tracking employee progression, and providing equitable access to internal resources, enables you to more passively demonstrate investment in employees alongside active development programmes. Integrated cloud human resource management systems can provide comprehensive management of human resources, centralising information and enabling prompt engagement between staff and department heads.

All told, this can have a serious impact on profitability – at least, from an administrative perspective. High staff turnover is expensive to manage, between job advertisements, recruitment contracting and the man-hours required to interview, onboard and train new staff. Developing existing staff can help keep these costs at a merciful minimum.

Productivity

There is a powerful side-effect to cultivating a more content workforce through active investment in development, in the form of heightened productivity. Invested workers are motivated workers, and happy; happy workers are, according to a recent university study, in the region of 12% more productive on average. This is a remarkable statistic, and one that could secure the longevity of a business.

Cultivating Leaders

Proper employee development can see strong figures emerge from the workforce. Those with an aptitude for leadership can be cultivated for big-ticket positions within a business – not only reducing reliance on recruiting, but also creating new and formidable talent from scratch. This can be a more effective route to robust leadership than hiring in, as leadership figures that rise through the ranks internally are more likely to have a real vested interest in the business’ success.

Attracting Talent

This is not to say that attracting external talent is a bad thing. Indeed, well-advertised progression and development programmes can improve the calibre of applicants to advertised positions. Overall, this can lead to a stronger, better-skilled and more robust workforce.