It’s always a sad day when an employee hands in their resignation. Or at least it usually is unless they’re the worst employee you ever had. Ya, you know the one.
But most employees are great and we want them to stick around. It’s costly to train a replacement and every time someone quits, the morale of the department or organization (depending on the size) plummets.
There’s nothing good about high employee turnover and any good company should want to do something about it. If you don’t look at high turnover with great concern then you’re not a good leader.
Of course, some roles traditionally have higher turnover than others. But that doesn’t mean you have to accept it and do nothing about it!
There’s always something that can be done to help lower turnover and training is a great place to start. That’s exactly what this article is here to help with.
High turnover doesn’t have to be accepted for roles that traditionally have high turnover.
You can’t deny that employee turnover rates affect all companies, large and small. It can be especially damaging to an organization’s stability if it remains high. Not only does it require a lot of resources to replace employees who leave, but it can also hurt the quality of work.
You know what that means… Less profit and a damaged reputation. Any leader who cares about doing good cares about their employees. That means it’s essential for leaders to find ways to reduce their employee turnover rate and keep their business running smoothly.
This even applies to call centers which are known for having stubbornly high turnover rates. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Making sure employees have proper training is one way to reduce high turnover. We think it’s the single best way to reduce that number. And as far as training goes, there’s no better way than to help employees with digital training because of its self-paced nature which lets employees go at their own pace.
Digital training is a great way to improve employee performance and engagement, as well as reduce the turnover rate. That sounds like a win-win to me!
There’s nothing worse than starting a new job and being thrown in with no support and no training. Not only that but when there’s high turnover and you find out the most senior employee has only been there a year, that’s a big red flag.
Digital training includes self-paced courses, videos, tutorials, and lots. of other types of asynchronous content that can be accessed from any device. With digital training, businesses can reach a large number of employees quickly and easily. That means they can provide more comprehensive training that will reduce high employee turnover rates.
And that’s just the beginning of what digital training can do for an organization!
Let’s take a look a little deeper into the benefits before we get into some of the how.
The Benefits of Digital Training for Employee Retention
If you’ve taken any type of training for a company in the past 40 years then you’ve likely taken at least one type of digital training. But, as with most types of technology it has grown in popularity. That’s because it’s a great way to train employees effectively at scale while improving employee retention and reducing high employee turnover.
Training employees not only provides employees with the tools and resources they need to succeed but also provides them with a greater sense of motivation and self-confidence. That’s especially true for lesser skilled employees who don’t come to the job knowing everything they need from day 1.
Even for those who know their job skills (such as project managers), there’s much more to a company than the default knowledge of everyone’s role. Every organization has specific tools, specific cultures, etc.
Not knowing the internal culture of the company can make it hard to do the job well.
That’s one of the biggest benefits of asynchronous digital training. It’s a scalable and easy way to give new employees a view into the necessary parts of your organization to understand it better. It can be used to give a comprehensive understanding of their job roles and the company’s overall goals.
It’s also helpful for every employee to know how they’re contributing to the organization and what the organization’s goals are. How can they be expected to contribute if they don’t know these things?
When people feel like they have an important role to play in your organization, that makes them happier. All of this translates into increased employee engagement because they feel more connected to the company.
Digital training also provides an opportunity for employees to learn new skills and gain experience in a variety of areas for their jobs. This helps increase job satisfaction and drive performance, leading to greater employee retention.
When an employee knows what they need to know to do a good job then they’re happier. Some of the best jobs I’ve had take the time to train me for company specifics and how they do things.
The worst jobs?
They throw you in with the sharks and expect you to shadow someone on day one without training. It’s the training that makes all the difference.
And no, pairing you with someone doing the job isn’t training. It’s stressful especially when the person you’re shadowing has quotas they must make.
Digital training provides employees with the tools and resources they need to be successful in their jobs and to understand their goals and objectives more clearly. That’s never bad if you expect their role to make a difference and contribute to company growth.
Making a mistake and getting feedback is much better than making a costly mistake with a customer.
Digital training also helps reduce high employee turnover by providing employees with performance feedback. This can help build trust and loyalty between the company and its employees and increase their sense of purpose and motivation.
Not only that but it’s nice to get feedback and a better understanding of the job before you make a costly mistake with a customer.
Don’t you think?
Software simulations create a safe learning environment with less stress and the ability to make mistakes without doing damage. It provides employees with the tools and resources they need to be successful, while also creating a sense of purpose and connection to the company.
That’s a win for employees and a win for the organization!
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows with digital training, though. Let’s look at some of the challenges and what you might need to consider.
Challenges and Considerations for Digital Training For Reducing Employee Churn
Okay, churn is usually a term used for customer turnover but why not employees too?
Turnover, churn. Potato, potato.
You know how you read those differently 🙂
Or maybe you’re one for tomato and tomato.
But it’s not all positive all the time with digital training.
It does provide an effective way for businesses to reduce employee turnover by helping build and maintain employee loyalty. There are several challenges and considerations to keep in mind when implementing a digital training program.
Engaging, Effective, and Relevant
One of the main challenges with digital training is ensuring that the training is engaging and effective. There’s nothing worse than dry personality-less eLearning.
Engaging and effective doesn’t just come from making it super interesting or funny, though. It all comes down to having relevant training which is more important than anything else. That might mean a software simulation that doesn’t just cover how to use an application but rather how to use it in the employee’s flow of work.
Online training modules must be well-designed and interactive to keep employees engaged and motivated to learn. And more important, the content must be relevant and up-to-date to ensure employees are receiving the most accurate and useful information and that it’s directly useful to their job.
No matter how awesome a course is, if it doesn’t immediately apply to an employee’s work then they’ll likely tune out.
Adequate Support
Another challenge with digital training is providing adequate support and resources. That means making sure it’s comprehensive enough and employees have access to the tools and information they need to succeed.
This may include providing employees with access to digital resources, such as self-paced courses and instructional videos but it could also mean making it easy for them to find those resources.
It could even mean providing ongoing support and information sharing through a community on your enterprise social network.
Making sure you provide the right content and it’s easy to access is hard.
Sometimes a knowledge base article is more helpful than a video or a course. It can be a huge challenge to make sure employees have the right resources available when they need them.
You also need to know when digital training isn’t going to cut it and you have to offer a real person to help.
Cost
While the cost of high turnover is typically more than training, that doesn’t mean you should have an endless budget for training. It can be a challenge to make sure you are providing the right type of training.
Do you need a 30-minute course when a job aid will do?
Probably not.
Believe me, this is extremely common because performance support is often forgotten but one of the most valuable forms of training.
So, always make sure you are making the right judgment for exactly what type of digital training is needed and if it’s needed at all. Otherwise, your cost for reducing turnover will be much higher than it needs to be even though it will still always be cheaper than high turnover.
By taking the time to think through the challenges and considerations associated with digital training, you can create training programs that effectively reduce employee turnover and strengthen employee loyalty.
By providing engaging, relevant content, adequate support and resources, and measuring the cost carefully, you can ensure that digital training programs are effective at reducing high employee turnover.
Ways Digital Training Reduces Employee Turnover
Digital training is all about quickly and easily introducing new hires (and also current employees) to the company’s policies and procedures (or updates to them), and giving them the skills they need to succeed.
It’s the perfect way to deliver a helpful introduction to your organization as well as the specific role and its part in the organization.
Part of the beauty of using digital training to help employees learn their roles and about the organization is that they can go at their own pace. It also almost always reduces the time and resources required for traditional instructor-led training. That’s one reason we don’t do instructor-led training at all.
Time equals money and digital training takes less time (and money).
We were able to save every employee 30-40 minutes to learn a new system before gaining access to it. It was required, they needed to know the information, but why spend an hour when they could spend 20-30 minutes?
Not to mention that can easily translate into millions of dollars saved. Pretty cool right?
That’s not even going into detail about how a good software simulation gives employees interactive practice in a realistic environment. Don’t tell or show, have them do is what we always say.
By teaching employees the knowledge and skills they need from day one, digital training helps to reduce the time and money invested in training new hires.
Digital training also helps to increase employee engagement, which is a key factor in reducing employee turnover. Higher engagement equals happier employees.
By providing employees with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs effectively, digital training can help boost morale and increase employee satisfaction.
A manager’s job isn’t necessarily to train employees but rather to support employees. That means managers can point employees to valuable resources which helps reduce the burden of training on managers. That frees up their time to focus on more pressing tasks or finding even better resources for employees.
Digital training is also an effective way to increase employee productivity. By teaching employees the necessary skills quickly, it can help to reduce the time it takes to complete certain tasks, and also reduce the amount of time needed for training in the future.
It also increases employee productivity because better training typically translates into fewer mistakes. Some roles can cause some pretty major issues in data accuracy.
Well-trained and supported employees translate to happy employees. Happy employees leave less.
And last but not least, digital training helps companies save money in the long run. Yes, digital training can be expensive to create on the front end but you more than save that money with its long-term cost savings. Not to mention it’s incredibly scalable.
There’s a much greater cost in not doing training well than the cost of training in the first place.
By reducing the amount of time and resources needed to train new hires, companies can save money on training costs and reduce the amount of time that goes into onboarding.
Digital training is an effective way to reduce employee turnover and help companies save money. And the savings just keep getting bigger over time!
By providing employees with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs effectively, digital training helps increase engagement and productivity while reducing the amount of time and money invested in training new hires.
Happy employees = happy company.
Tips for Utilizing Digital Training to Reduce Employee Turnover
Hopefully, you see the value of digital training and the power it can bring to your organization. It does so many wonderful things and is extremely powerful. It’s also one of the best ways to reduce employee turnover.
That’s pretty valuable in itself!
But how do you do digital training right to reduce employee turnover?
Empower
One way is to blend company-specific training with access to external training that allows them to choose their learning path. Providing access to tools like Udemy or LinkedIn Learning is invaluable for allowing employees to build their knowledge their way.
While tools like those can offer generic non-organization-specific training, custom training is still necessary. Your organization is unique and the tools you use are unique. That means you will also need custom digital training, such as the custom software training we create.
This ensures employees can stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies. Putting the power to decide and map their journey increases motivation even more and helps them develop the necessary skills to excel in their role.
It also empowers them to be in charge of their career advancement. That means there are no excuses to grow and do better things.
Easy Access
It’s easy to find things on Google if it exists. If it doesn’t exist then ask ChatGPT and it’ll make it up for you (it will fabricate information as well as citations, made-up links, and all).
If training is hard to find or access, nobody’s going to do it. So, provide employees with easy-to-use online platforms or mobile app/website that makes it crazy easy to access what’s needed.
Some platforms such as Axonify make getting relevant messages and short training directly to employees easy. There should be one source to rule them all so employees don’t have to search multiple different places.
They simply won’t do that and will instead call the help desk. Reducing help desk calls is an entirely different issue. While a good platform might be expensive, the money you save could pay you back tenfold.
Making digital training easily available on employees’ preferred devices allows them to access training whenever and wherever is most convenient for them.
Quality Trumps Quantity
Another AI burn for ya… ChatGPT is great at quantity but it’s bad at quality. Don’t lie to yourself, you know it’s bad. There’s no humanity in AI.
High quality means highly relevant and engaging. That also means people will pay attention. That’s kind of important.
Nope, content isn’t king. The right kind of content is king. eLearning, videos, performance support, etc. aren’t the best. The right solution for the problem is the best which could be a blend of a few options or perhaps it’s just a simple job aid.
Don’t do more than is necessary for the content because then you just overwhelm and confuse everyone. Less is more when it comes to training which is why we start with nothing and add only what’s necessary rather than start with everything and cut back.
People prefer training that helps them get done what they need to get done quicker and easier.
People don’t prefer videos, they prefer videos that are relevant, interesting, and entertaining. Videos may be popular but training videos aren’t necessarily the best solution for the goal. My point is, use the right type of training for the content, not just what seems popular.
By taking advantage of digital training and doing it right, companies can reduce high employee turnover. It also helps ensure their employees are well-equipped to do their jobs successfully.
With the right use of digital training, companies can create an engaging and interactive learning experience for their employees that can help them develop the skills they need to remain valuable and productive at their jobs.
And that all leads back to a reduced turnover. Happy employees simply aren’t as likely to leave.
Wrap Up
Now you can see how essential training is for reducing high employee turnover. There are not only tons of benefits of digital training but some challenges and considerations also.
Among all the positives and negatives, training will almost always reduce turnover. Once you meet a basic level of pay as well as other perks, training is going to move the needle for reducing the turnover rate more than anything.
You just need to make sure you empower your employees to make decisions for their future. That could mean giving them the tools to develop themselves but you can also provide a clear path for that development.
Quality company culture starts with good training that makes employees feel like they belong.
Empowerment is important but if employees can’t easily access training then it might as well not be there. And don’t overlook the importance of quality over quantity.
We’d love to work with you to create quality digital training or even help you build a great digital training strategy for your organization. If you have questions, the best place to start is to schedule a free consultation for us to chat about your goals.
We’re here to support your desire to decrease employee turnover. It’s an essential part of every organization’s success and digital training is a great path toward long-term employee happiness.