Whether your staff thrives on learning new things, wishes to grow in their careers, or aspires to become better human beings, employee training can fill a gap in their personal and professional development.
But there’s employee training, and then there’s retention training—the one that retains 50–67% of the workforce, according to LinkedIn. The latter implements corporate training programs designed to retain talent.
In this blog post, we’ll talk about why employee retention training matters and what it’s made of. You’ll learn in which organizations this kind of training makes the most sense, but most importantly, we’ll tell you how to create a retention training program of your own (while addressing the challenges of putting it into practice).
What Is Retention Training?
Retention training is an employee development strategy to retain staff through corporate training programs.
By designing and implementing such programs, you make employees happier at work and more engaged with their roles, the teams they’re in, and where the company is heading. You give them reasons to stay with the company for years to come, and as a result, you bring the employee turnover rate down.
From the perspective of personnel, especially your current and aspiring leaders, retention training is the perfect opportunity to develop leadership competencies, grow their careers in the long term, and move into higher roles at the organization.
Now, employee retention training isn’t a specific category of corporate training but rather a combination of categories, such as onboarding training, leadership training, or soft skill training. And it doesn’t have its own delivery method.
You can deliver retention training through mentoring, eLearning, instructor-led training, virtual instructor-led training, immersive training, rotations, or shadowing. It depends on the topics that could have prevented former employees from leaving the company or topics that can address the concerns of current employees about career growth.
Here’s a tip for you: Run exit interviews and employee engagement surveys to get to know better what you can do to make staff feel appreciated on the job, competent in their roles, connected with their peers, and committed to the organization’s mission, vision, and goals.
However you design a retention training program, keep in mind that it must have one overarching purpose: to increase your employee retention rate.
Benefits of Retention Training
Well-designed retention training programs increase job satisfaction across the company and at every level of the organizational hierarchy.
Boosts Engagement
Appreciating each employee, praising their work, and thanking them for their contributions must be an ongoing concern of every manager, executive, and business owner. It has an individual impact, but the repercussions are collective and as wide as the company.
You see, when a staff member feels that their career growth is a priority, they become more excited about showing up, doing their best, and to keep learning. They work hard and follow through because their focus is ultimately to take care of clients.
Career development opportunities tell your personnel that their work means a lot to you.
Improves Loyalty
Employees notice when the company is actively committed to their professional growth. And they give back by being loyal to the company in the long term.
They stay as long as you see, listen to, and support them, and they’ll trust you along the way, which is great for building a positive organizational culture.
That’s a strong point for putting together the career and learning paths your staff needs to get where they aspire to be, whether that’s developing their competencies to perform better at their current roles, advancing to higher positions within the organization, or even switching roles.
Raises Productivity
Although retention training engages employees and makes them stick with your company for years, it also grows them into more competent professionals.
By equipping them with the skills, knowledge, and behavior to win at doing their jobs, they become more efficient and make more meaningful contributions to their teams and the wider organization. You also raise the staff’s confidence and enthusiasm, which boosts their efficiency even more.
Reduces Turnover Costs
According to Forbes, a salaried worker can cost 3–4 times their annual salary to replace. So, anything you can do to prevent employee turnover or, in other words, to prevent firing underperforming staff members or having workers quit their jobs voluntarily is a good strategy.
It saves on recruitment costs and has a positive impact on the company’s bottom line. After all, 77% of employees prefer staying with their company in the long run, provided that the company offers a better corporate training program.
Strengthens Employer Brand
Employee retention training helps companies build strong employer brands. And that’s a big step towards standing out in a labor market where talent is scarce and employee expectations are high.
Not only do top candidates look for roles where they fit, products they resonate with, purposeful corporate missions, fair compensation, and great benefits, but they also seek organizations known for nurturing their people. And that’s where retention training plays an important role.
Key Components of Effective Retention Training Programs
As the needs and goals of employees and organizations evolve, so must you adjust your training programs. But you must also approach retention training holistically, which means not only designing and implementing corporate training programs but also coordinating that training with career development actions.
1. Career Development
To match your employees’ career aspirations with the training programs you developed—or to figure out which training programs to develop beforehand—we recommend creating a skill matrix for each employee. That’s a map of their competencies and corresponding proficiency levels.
Then, by looking at where they are in terms of competence development and where they wish to be according to their career path, you can create a matching learning path. They’ll appreciate that and commit to the company as much as you commit to their development.
2. Leadership Training
Leaders shape the dynamics and outcomes of businesses, but leading is hard and complex. And that’s why investing in growing leadership competencies through corporate training is always a good idea.
Aspiring leaders need tools and confidence to take on leadership roles. It’s not by chance that a leadership succession planning checklist includes leadership training.
Besides, there’s nothing more engaging to an aspiring leader than becoming one. And that’s one effective way of keeping them with the company for a long time.
3. Soft Skill Training
Sure, technical skills are essential for performing a role. However, what truly makes employees thrive in their roles, and teams hold together and function like well-oiled machines, are soft skills—such as emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, and collaboration.
With soft skill training being a part of your retention training program, you’ll promote a positive, healthy, and harmonious work environment that keeps staff engaged and prevents them from leaving the company voluntarily.
4. Onboarding Training
When new hires join a company, they’re excited to step into a new role, meet new colleagues, learn new things, and help the organization reach new heights. But you’ve got to make them feel welcome and prepared to fulfill their mission as they envisioned you would since they accepted the job offer.
Plus, first impressions are long-lasting, so setting new hires up for success at a new company by delivering them new hire training is perfect for making a good impression and sticking that impression in their minds for a long time.
5. Regular Feedback and Evaluation
For a strong retention training program—and besides creating personalized career and learning paths and delivering the training—you must guarantee the program aligns with your employees’ needs.
To gain insight into your employees’ needs, run 360-degree feedback surveys, exit interviews, employee engagement surveys, and pulse surveys. Additionally, ask staff training evaluation questions no later than 24 hours after they complete each course. This insight is exactly what you need to adjust the program and help keep personnel within the company
Examples of Retention Training in Practice
Employee retention training makes sense in any industry, really, but it makes more sense in particular sectors of the economy than others.
- The tech industry. Due to their fast pace and global scale, the most successful tech companies often offer leadership training to their top performers so they grow into loyal employees. Take the example of Google and The Google School for Leaders.
- The retail sector. Walmart’s cross-training program prepares staff to cover extra roles on top of their main role. This initiative not only broadens their skill sets and allows them to grow their careers but also supports team members who need to take time off or help during busy shifts.
- Corporations. Consulting firms like Deloitte, with its Emerging Leaders Development Program, offer mentoring programs to their high-performing managers and senior managers to prepare them for greater responsibilities.
How to Develop a Retention Training Program
The secret to designing a training program that does increase your employee retention rate is strategy. From analyzing turnover data to measuring the program’s success, every step must be intentional. But below, you’ll find an overview of those steps to get you started.
1. Analyze Turnover Data
Run exit interviews to understand what led former employees to leave the company and whether you could have prevented those departures with retention training.
Gathering all the employee feedback you can will help you find out what’s missing in your retention training program and whether certain teams, roles, or departments need more attention than others.
2. Define Goals
Once you understand the impact your corporate training has been having on the company’s employee turnover rate, it’s time to define the numbers you want to achieve.
Specify the turnover rate you’re aiming for and break it down into other KPIs, like a target employee promotion rate or net promoter score (NPS), to name a couple. Those numbers will assist you in defining the retention training program.
3. Tailor Training to Employee Needs
Rely on 360-degree feedback surveys to obtain insights into which training current staff need to perform better in their roles or advance their careers. Conducting employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys may also shed light on personnel’s training needs.
And if you want to dig deeper into their learning preferences and the topics they’d like to or must learn about, organizing focus groups and creating career paths, skill matrices, and personalized learning paths will get you there.
4. Leverage Technology
Look into the possibilities of using a learning management system (LMS), custom mobile learning apps, and immersive training solutions to deliver your retention training program.
Just make sure the platform you choose fits the training methods you’ll use, is accessible to remote workers (if you have them), and is appropriate for hybrid learning (if that’s the case). You might even need more than one platform for the program.
5. Evaluate and Adapt
Ask employees training evaluation questions up to 24 hours after they finish each course in your retention training program—to evaluate the program’s efficacy.
That, along with running employee feedback surveys regularly and tracking the KPIs you defined earlier, will assist you in measuring progress, calculating the overall success of the program, and adjusting it.
Reach out to us if you need expert guidance for the customization of your employee retention training program.
Challenges and Solutions in Retention Training
Don’t panic if you experience bumps on the road to designing and implementing your employee retention training program. There’s a solution for each one of them, and just in case, we’re going to go ahead and give you a few practical tips to overcome common challenges.
- Budget constraints. Start with a more affordable solution, like a low-cost LMS or mentoring initiatives, and switch to more expensive options, such as video eLearning, animated content, the development of a mobile learning app, hiring an instructor, or using immersive training technology if and when you need it. Prioritize the teams and departments with a high employee turnover.
- Resistance to change. To obtain the buy-in of executives and secure budget for the development of a retention training program, let them know of success stories from other companies. Do the same with managers and get their commitment to making room for corporate training in their team members’ schedules.
- Measuring effectiveness. Combining qualitative and quantitative data is always the way to go. Apart from post-training surveys, performance reviews, and employee feedback, the evolution of your employee turnover rate and other KPIs, such as the employee promotion rate and NPS, tells you from different perspectives whether your retention training program is working. You may also consider training completion rates, assessment pass rates, absenteeism, or productivity when evaluating the program’s effectiveness.
Create a Culture People Want to Stay In
Retention training is as much about reducing employee turnover as it is about building a workplace where people want to stay and grow.
By investing in strategically designed, people-centered training initiatives, you create a culture of employee development, trust, and opportunity. A strong retention training program is a smart solution to retain top talent, fill future leadership roles, and increase team engagement.
Ready to improve employee retention through training? Contact us today to learn how our tailored programs can help you create an engaged and loyal workforce.
