“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
-Benjamin Franklin
To train or not to train? Questioning whether the cost of training is worth your return is a completely valid concern. Unlike large corporations, small businesses don’t always have a large budget for training.
At Harbor Computer Services, we will always tell you that training is a worthwhile investment. One question regarding training that we get a lot is “What happens when I invest in training and then my employee leaves?” Our answer is “What happens if you don’t train your employee at all?”
Sometimes training is clearly needed and unavoidable.
A lot of small businesses fall within a specific niche, customer base, or industry. Often, this means specified software, apps, and processes. In these cases, training is unavoidable.
What are the hidden benefits of training?
Obviously, training will increase performance and production, but what are some of the other benefits of training?
Create Opportunities for Improvement
Once your employee fully understands a work process, this often leads to new ideas on how to improve the process and how it ties in with other processes. This improves workflow and production.
Increased Employee Satisfaction
Training shows your employees that they are valued. A valued employee will want to do a good job, rather than just show up to collect a paycheck.
Reduced Turnover
A valued employee will be more likely to remain in their position. They will feel that they have been invested in, producing loyalty.
Creates Consistency
Properly trained employees will be more likely to follow the proper procedures, causing fewer errors and increasing standards.
Training Actually Saves you Money
You have to think of training as an investment. Your employees are your assets and your investment is an upgrade of sorts. When you upgrade your home by adding a new patio, the value goes up, the same with employees. Training Saves you money in the following ways:
- Customer retention: An untrained employee is a liability when dealing with your customers. Training provides the expertise that is needed to keep your bread and butter, your customers.
- Mistakes cost money: Mistakes are going to happen. But most mistakes in the workplace happen due to insufficient training. Some mistakes can be extremely costly. Providing proper training will decrease your chances of costly mistakes.
- Inefficiencies: Untrained workers will not have the proper insight to correct inefficiencies in their work processes.
- Miscellaneous Expenses: The true hidden cost of mistakes are little incidentals. An incorrect document might need to be printed out again, costing more in ink, paper, and human resource. These all add up and could be avoided with proper training.
How to approach training
There are many avenues available for training. As mentioned before, small businesses have challenges in creating a training program that is effective and affordable. No one method for training is necessarily right.
A common approach is to train your power users first. Power users are users that pick up on new ideas and processes quickly, have patience with others, and are approachable for questions. Once your power users are more formally trained, have them train everyone else. Your power users can then be made available for when there are issues or questions.
Smaller businesses may choose to train everyone at once, maybe in a conference room over the course of a couple of hours.
Many businesses will take time to create procedure documents or work instructions. These documents will not take the place of more formal training but can be extremely helpful when bringing on new employees, or when there is a question in a work process. These can be formal or informal, and need to be reviewed on a regular basis and when processes change.
Having a properly trained workforce will ensure that the job gets done much quicker and much more efficiently. Employees who are trained have an increased sense of value, belonging, and loyalty; all of which increase your bottom line.
About Harbor Computer Services
Harbor Computer Services is an IT firm
servicing Southeastern Michigan. We work exclusively under contract with our
clients to provide technology direction and either become the IT department or
provide assistance to the internal IT they already have. We have won many
awards for our work over the years, including the worldwide Microsoft Partner
of the Year in 2010. We’re the smallest firm to have ever won this most
prestigious award. Most recently we were recognized as one of the top 20
visionaries in small business IT by ChannelPro Magazine (2015). And in 2016 as
the top Michigan IT firm for Manufacturing. There are a few simple things that
make Harbor Computer Services the best choice for your business. •We are
Professionals •We are Responsible •We are Concerned About The Success of Your
Business
