The Importance of Learning and Professional Development: Employee Retention

In August of 2021, 2.9 percent of the people in the United States quit their jobs. That was the highest total number of individuals willfully leaving employment since December of 2000. The number of those quitting in August rose by 242,000 to 4.3 million. Those skyrocketing numbers were largely caused by the Covid outbreak, and seemingly overnight the idea of employee retention became a top priority for leadership in 2022.

In our continued Blog Series, we are discussing the Top 3 Reasons learning and professional development is important to your company. We continue on this journey as we break down each reason with its own personalized blog; this blog focuses on Employee Retention.

If you've missed the previous entries in our Learning and Professional Development series, you check them out here:

• The Importance of Professional Development: Return on Investment

What is Employee Retention?

Employee Retention is an organization's ability to maintain its employees. The ability to hire great employees AND keep them is one of the top priorities companies have going into 2022. The Great Resignation of 2021 caused many to re-evaluate their pay structures, policies, and cultures to gain the opportunity to hire top talent. Many professionals are leaving their jobs due to low wages; however, studies have shown that the more companies invest in training their employees the higher their return on investment. U.S. business lose one trillion dollars yearly due to voluntary employee turnover. Keeping great employees goes hand in hand with learning and professional development training.

The Facts

Directly correlating to our previous blog post, a recent study by Career Builder showed that a company on average loses more than $14,000 for every job that stays vacant longer than three months . Losing employees equates to losing revenue. There are any number of reasons why people voluntarily leave their jobs, but a lack of learning and professional development is shown to be high on the list. For example, Team members want to feel valued, and they seek opportunities to grow. 75% of employees with learning and professional development opportunities are likely to stay for another five years.

Adding it all Together

Investing in the future of your employees is one of the best investments you can make. Not only does employee retention help your revenue gains, but it helps your company with its image. For example, Human Resource management training would help reduce your staff turnover by 70% and will result in 300% reduction in staff turnover. When your revenue grows, so will the ability to invest more in employee salaries and promotions. Growth for a company is growth for its employees. It's important to remember that top talent will go elsewhere when faced with little or no growth opportunities. That will lead to a high turnover rate which will discourage good candidates from applying. That is not the type of hiring cycle your company wants to find themselves in.

Takeaways

Retaining your top talent should be high on your list of priorities for 2022. Contact United Training today for assistance with your learning and professional development goals. You can also click here to view our Leadership and Development page which includes over 40 courses across four focused tracks.