Employer Benefits of Continuing Education

While continuing education has obvious benefits for employees in terms of additional career advancement and opportunities, employers can also reap rewards by fostering a climate where ongoing professional development can flourish.

Increased Productivity

A highly skilled workforce is a productive and efficient workforce. The more skilled an employee becomes in his or her job, the more efficient that employee becomes at completing assigned tasks. In a 2000 study titled “The Justification for IT Training,” Gartner Research found that every hour of effective training is worth five hours to a company due to employees having increased skills, requiring less support from co-workers or help desks and spending less time correcting errors.

Employee Retention

Employees who are given professional development opportunities to master the skills needed to do their jobs and advance their careers are going to be engaged employees. When a workforce is able to find job satisfaction and value in what it does, those workers are more likely to remain with the company. Millennials are now the largest generation in the U.S. labor market. According to analytics company Gallup, millennial turnover due to a lack of engagement costs the nation’s economy more than $30 billion each year.

Cross-Training

Ongoing professional development also allows an employer to cross-train workers. Cross-training benefits employees by providing additional skills that will help them advance their careers. However, it also results in significant gains for a business owner by providing a backup employee for any task that needs to be accomplished. This can help reduce the need for additional hires, give a workforce a fuller understanding of the importance of each role in the company and bring an outsider’s new perspective to different tasks.

Reduced Costs

Ever-evolving technologies are continuously altering the business landscape. Providing current employees with the training needed to stay abreast of the latest updates and advancements will reduce the need to hire additional workers with new skill sets. All of the previously mentioned benefits have the additional plus of reducing costs to a company. Higher productivity decreases costs of production, employee retention decreases costs of hiring and a cross-trained staff reduces the need for additional employees.

Company Culture

Ever-evolving technologies are continuously altering the business landscape. Providing current employees with the training needed to stay abreast of the latest updates and advancements will reduce the need to hire additional workers with new skill sets. All of the previously mentioned benefits have the additional plus of reducing costs to a company. Higher productivity decreases costs of production, employee retention decreases costs of hiring and a cross-trained staff reduces the need for additional employees.