Let’s be honest: in an ideal world, you’d love to invest in upskilling your employees.
After all, the benefits of training and development are quite obvious, and with the government constantly emphasising their support for upskilling, there are more incentives to prioritise employee training opportunities than ever.
But there are many factors to consider before sending your employees off to training programs:
- Will your business be able to afford sending entire departments for employee development?
- How will your business’ productivity be affected by employees being absent to attend training?
- Will your employees feel engaged by learning and development programs?
- Is it really prudent to invest in the professional development of your employees when they could leave anytime?
- Will the skills and knowledge gained from training employees really align with your business goals?
These are valid concerns for any employer and if you’re still on the fence about upskilling your workforce, here are some reasons why training your employees is not only beneficial, but crucial for the longevity and growth of your business!
Employee Training Future-Proofs the Workplace
In the early 2020s, blockchain technology and decentralised finance were the prime focus of many enterprises. However, in less than two years, many enterprises are now scrambling to implement AI and large language models into their businesses.
While we question ourselves on what will the next big tech advance be next year, or even in the next six months, it is vital to understand if your business and employees are equipped to handle it?
Embracing the spirit of continuous learning and equipping your employees with knowledge of the latest tech trends and tools is an investment that will always pay off.
Yes, we hear you: it isn’t sustainable to jump onto new technological bandwagons all the time, but knowing the direction the market is headed towards is one of the many benefits of employee training, and can empower your business to be ready to pivot when the time is right!
After all, technology advances at a breakneck speed, and having any kind of head start can prove to be the tipping point between profiting off a new trend, or slipping into obscurity.
Workplace Training in Cybersecurity Keeps Your Organisation Safe
In this day and age, it is necessary to send your team – or at the very least, your IT department – for frequent cybersecurity training programs and refresher courses.
When we think about cybersecurity, a common misconception is that hackers and scammers will only target vulnerable, less tech-savvy individuals. However, data breaches at major local organisations — even in the public sector — have risen dramatically over the last two years.
It is quite clear that businesses are becoming a prime target for hackers given the increased amount of data collection in recent times. Workplace safety is no longer simply about preventing physical accidents, but digital breaches as well!
Remember: prevention is better than cure. Funding employee training for cybersecurity may cost your enterprise a little time and money, but it will be nowhere near as expensive or reputation-damaging as clearing the fallout from a major data breach.
Training Employees Boosts Employee Performance!
Remember when the workflows of entire business departments were structured entirely on spreadsheets and email reminders?
With various productivity tools like Monday.com, Airtable, Clickup, Asana, and Trello – and employees with the proper training to use them – those days are almost entirely behind us.
While some employers may adopt a ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ mindset, they potentially miss out on having skilled employees adopting new workflows or technology by simply investing in employee training for proficiency in digital productivity tools.
Moreover, employees who are able to automate tasks and streamline their workflows will have the ability to take on more responsibilities, have better job performance and job satisfaction, and can transfer their knowledge to new employees in your organisation.
Training and Development Increases Client Confidence
Enhancing your team with the knowledge from good training programs by registered training providers also nets you another advantage: official certifications.
Being able to confidently list out your team’s certifications and proficiency in digital and productivity tools is a huge advantage while negotiating with clients for new business, and could increase your profit margins.
Furthermore, being able to introduce your organisation as one that invests in development opportunities and employee learning is a message to clients and stakeholders that your enterprise is not only qualified to take on current projects, but ready for future ones as well.
Employee Training Programs Boosts Employee Retention
Put yourself in the shoes of an employee: would you be more interested in staying in a company that has you do the same task using the same tools day after day?
Or would you prefer an organisation that spends money on employee training programs that teach you new skills to not only help you do your job better, but increases the potential for career advancement?
With the prospect of AI taking over many entry-level jobs looming over everyone’s heads, employees are now more likely to favour organisations that invest in their employees’ professional development — with 13% of surveyed employees valuing learning and development as a job characteristic Singaporean workers favour the most.
Adopting a ‘hire and fire’ mindset is an expensive, tedious process that damages your organisation’s culture, productivity, and employee engagement – all of which can lead to disastrous outcomes far more dire than the cost and time spent on career development for employees whose potential you already trust.
Empowering Workers with Career Resilience
An unpleasant reality that many business owners face in the current economic climate is the need to reorganise and restructure their businesses due to unforeseen changes in the business landscape.
Investing in the professional development of your employees will enhance them with more diverse skill setsskillsets, making them career-resilient enough to weather changes in their roles and beyond should your company need to undergo restructuring.
Soft Skills Training
Many people – business owners and workers alike – think of upskilling and workplace training only in terms of upgrading one’s hard skills: learning to use productivity tools to increase workforce productivity, or digital skills training to learn about tools or techniques that have become essential to a certain field of work.
However, soft skills training is just as essential. As an employer, you should know all too well that no employee is perfect, and that assigning team members to certain projects also involves working around their weaknesses.
For example, you have a web developer on your team who works fast, and has the expertise nobody else does, but isn’t great at working with their teammates because they have trouble communicating. As their manager, you could close this skill gap by sending this developer for an Effective Communication Strategies course.
The above scenario may apply to only one employee, but imagine the potential of sending an entire team, or department, for the same soft skills training course, and to have them use the skills they’ve learnt to collaborate better as a team!
While upskilling employees definitely incurs cost and time, this investment can pay for itself in the form of skills transfer. Any new hires your organisation makes will receive the technical skills training they need from your already-established pool of upskilled employees.
This enhances team collaboration and leadership development, and empowers your team to mentor others during on-the-job training.
Government Support
Putting in the time and resources to upskill your employees can often seem like a hassle that isn’t worth the aforementioned benefits. After all, having a large portion of your workforce out of the office while they attend upskilling courses is not a pleasant prospect.
However, our Government has made it clear that upskilling is key to the future development of Singapore, and has implemented several beneficial schemes for eligible enterprises to sponsor their employees for workplace training and professional development.
At the time of writing, SkillsFuture currently offers course subsidies of up to 90% per employee, S$10,000 in SkillsFuture Enterprise Credits for eligible courses, and an absentee payroll of up to S$4.50 per hour of attended training per employee.
Upskilling: A Win-Win for Businesses and the Workforce
We’ve covered the numerous benefits your enterprise and employees can enjoy with the adoption of a continuous learning mindset in your organisation.
As a business owner, you are in the best position to evaluate your team members, spot skill gaps in your workforce, and decide the best way to implement workplace training and professional development within your organisation.
To take away much of the guesswork that comes with organising effective workplace training, registered training providers like FirstCom Academy offer a wide-range of relevant upskilling courses taught by certified, industry veteran trainers in conducive, accessible training centres!
