Is Your Training Program Costing You Money?

Companies are investing in training more than ever, and it pays off, with the most successful companies leading the training investment charge. However, it’s not enough to throw money at a training plan and expect it to work–you should invest wisely and avoid making costly mistakes.

The cost of ineffective training.

Just as effective training adds value to your company, ineffective training kills your ROI in multiple ways. Some symptoms of unfocused training programs include:

• High turnover. Employees who aren’t supported in their professional development through effective training are likely to leave, and every employee that walks away leaves you with a hefty bill on the recruiting and training that will follow. For a mid-range employee, it costs 20% of their annual salary to find and train a replacement. (For those who hate math: If you lose an employee who earns $40,000 yearly, your company faces a loss of $8,000.)

• Lack of productivity. The right training materials should support your employees in doing their job thoroughly and efficiently. When they lack those materials, their productivity plummets. It’s speculated that the low productivity in the workplace costs U.S. businesses up to $550 billion per year.

• Wasted resources. Each dollar that you spend on training programs that don’t work impacts your bottom line negatively. A 2014 survey reports an average cost of $1,798 to develop and implement just one hour of training content, with the average employee requiring 31.5 hours of training per year. If your training program is proving ineffective, this adds up to a huge loss.

Get your training program back on track.

Address the shortcomings of your training program and reevaluate. Those old videos and binders aren’t going to cut it anymore—it’s time for a next-generation strategy. Here’s how to ensure success going forward.

• Plan your next move. Come armed with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish from your training program (Increased sales? Higher employee engagement?), and how you’ll accomplish that. Don’t be afraid to consult with the experts in your HR department or with a consulting team if you aren’t quite sure how to go about crafting the best training program possible.

• Encourage hands-on skill development. Make sure that your reps fully understand what they’ve learned from each training session by having them use those skills in the field. Follow up with employees after training to make sure that they know how to implement the latest information into their sales dialogues or their daily prep for prospect calls.  

• Avoid information overload. It’s easy to think “this is important information, so our entire workforce needs to know it.” This approach often leads to a workforce that’s overloaded with information and unfocused. Instead, pay attention to who will use what information on a day-to-day basis. Customize training content to ensure that each learner is able to easily discover and ingest the information that they need to do their jobs better.  

• Use analytics to spend intelligently. Where’s the sense in investing in features that aren’t useful to you? Track metrics such as time spent per page or element, and pay attention to which ones get the most use from your employees. If your videos aren’t resonating or proving useful, make changes and test to see if video usage improves. Use analytics to get a sense of what kind of messaging hits home, and if video as a training format works for your team.

Employee training is an integral part of managing your company’s success, from your employees to your bottom line. The right all-in-one content platform provides the foundation that you need to create and implement great training solutions that add value to your reps and your company.