Why training improves employee retention

Gareth: Alex, I heard a quote from a colleague recently, and it was talking about the investment of training your people.

And the quote was, “I can’t invest in that because, they might leave.” Of course, the retort to that was, “yeah, but they might stay”. So, I’d just be really curious about your thoughts around that and the importance of investing in your people.

Alex: So, let’s be clear, people leave organizations for multiple reasons and, not going to list them here, but things like pay, opportunity would be very much part of that, but also the culture of an organization is something that very often, trumps the more obvious reasons why people want to move on. Getting the culture right is really key.

Investing in people’s capability is a critical element of culture.

Because if you do it right, one, it’s not putting them on training calls, that’s not going to fix it. But if training is part of their capability development and you as leaders in the organization take their capability, their coaching, and their growth as human beings, seriously, they’re much more likely to stay.

So, if you’re just going to invest in training calls, they might leave you actually the problem is much bigger than that. It’s actually the culture that you’re creating in the organization, of which training is a small part. That’s the thing they’re going to remember.

And you’re right. If you get that right, they might stay, and they’ll become better people as a result of it.

Gareth: So, it’s not just investing in training programs. It’s actually the culture that surrounds us or the coaching, that’s what creates a much more likely environment to keep good people performing at their best and for a longer period of time.

Alex: Correct. That’s exactly it.