Training Wheels

Does training make employees more likely to leave?

That’s one of the persistent arguments against training: as counterintuitive as it seems, some employers take the position that ignorance is a workforce retention strategy.
A new study both supports and refutes that.

As reported recently in the Journal of Applied Psychology, training increases loyalty to the employer when it is tied to job performance and ongoing career development and advancement. In other words, the training needs to equip and commission employees for current and upcoming responsibilities: it needs to have a point. If employees actually use what they have learned and can see how it helps them achieve their next career goals…they’ll stick around so that their ambitions can play out.

Confident, convincing communication skills should be a core criteria for rising leaders. These skills help them cultivate their personal brands…and equip them to represent the organization on industry panels as they ease into expert and spokesperson roles.  Communication skills need to be woven into each cycle of executive training and coaching so that employees are more adept at crafting and delivering messages as they have more mission-critical messages to deliver.