Employee Training and Development: A Valuable Investment?

When managers are asked to scale down their budgets, one of the first line items cut is employee training and development. This is especially true in lean organizations where funds are carefully allocated and the focus is on the “here and now”—what must we do today to get the work completed now. And thus, training and development is axed. What is unfortunate about this reality is that it neglects to consider the costs associated with forgoing employee development—the negative financial impact on the “here and now” and the long run.

I recently stumbled across a Harvard Business Review article titled “Why Top Young Managers Are in a Nonstop Job Hunt” discussing why employees are exiting organizations. The article noted that many top performing employees are not receiving the training and career development they want in order to help them grow their skillsets, causing them to look for other employers that provide such support. The article stated:

“Dissatisfaction with some employee-development efforts appears to fuel many early exits.  We asked young managers what their employers do to help them grow in their jobs and what they’d like their employers to do, and found some large gaps.  Workers reported that companies generally satisfy their needs for on-the-job development and that they value these opportunities, which include high-visibility positions and significant increases in responsibility.   But they’re not getting much in the way of formal development, such as training, mentoring and coaching – things they also value highly.”

Losing a key employee or even multiple employees can be devastating to the achievement of strategic 

---

initiatives and general business operations. The time it takes to build new relationships with internal/external contacts as well as learning processes and procedures can create huge delays in accomplishing business initiatives. It can also create more work for those individuals still employed by the organization who have to pick up extra work or even put aside their own duties to assist with work left by the vacancy. While all of this is happening, dollars are flying out the window in lost productivity, recruiting costs, time spent interviewing, time spent reorganizing work, etc. Just think that this may have been avoided with some employee training and development.

Employee training and development is an investment—an investment in your people and an investment in your bottom line. While there is cost associated with training and development, the benefits gained from it outweigh the hard costs. 

So what has been your organization’s perspective of employee training and development? Has it been one of value or has it been one of cost? Either way you flip the coin, there is a cost of not providing employee training and development. While you think you may be saving money by striking it from your budget, you may just find you doubled or even tripled your cost by losing top performing employees.