Getting the best from your people is a delicate and multi-faceted issue – spanning recruitment, team-building, collaboration, management styles, flexible working options, benefits and rewards.

However, the single most important factor in whether your team is reaching its full potential is the investment you make in them.

There are very good reasons for investing in good induction, refresher and ongoing skills training for your staff.

More effective

When you invest in giving people the coaching and the skills they need to do their jobs, they will be able to work faster, more intelligently and bring new ideas to the table. You eliminate the every-day problems that hold them back in their daily work and you will directly impact their productivity in positive ways.

Productivity

Productivity isn’t only about giving people the skills they specifically need to do their jobs. When people feel valued and invested in, they are more engaged and more productive.

Research has shown that engaged workers are 21 percent more productive than their non-engaged counterparts.

Retention

Engaged employees are also more likely to stay with a company – even if they receive a better-paid job offer from elsewhere.

When one considers that it costs on average twice annual salary to recruit a new person to a role, the economic benefits of investing in your people are clear.

Solve problems

Training can also help protect the business from external threats – whether meeting the challenges set by your competition or mitigating risk such as avoiding security or phishing attacks that can debilitate your entire IT system.

This makes regular IT security awareness training for all staff an important element of any training programme.

A workforce for the future

It is no longer acceptable for workers to have a static skillset.

The pace of change society and business is experiencing today is extraordinary – organisations need to invest in their people in order to ensure they have the skills to do their job today and the skills they are going to need to meet the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

Improved customer experience

There is a tendency for training programmes to be directed at a few “super users” who then are tasked with rolling out that expertise to other business users. However, if you want training to have a bigger impact on your customers’ experience, invest in training everyone a little bit.

This incremental improvement will impact every customer interaction; improving each a little bit ensures a uniform improvement is delivered from your training investment.

It also avoids the problem of concentrating knowledge in one place – and creating yourself a retention, leave and planning issue. Your super-users can’t be with everyone all the time, and the rest of your organisation will be left struggling.

Instead, funnel all staff through a light-touch ongoing programme for better effect.

What’s more, everyone feels invested in and more engaged with your organisation.

Ultimately, that has to be the best way to get the best from everyone.

Is ongoing security awareness training important to you? Find out how you can achieve better threat awareness and reduce your risk of a security breach today.

Go to GM Cyber Aware to find out more.