How Staff Education Can Boost Employee Performance

Your employees might love your health plan and your office perks, but it’s possible their development programs would also benefit from a corporate education program. Many businesses have implemented such strategies as tuition reimbursement, skill training programs, continuing education credits and other perks to ensure that staff members have all of the skills and resources they need to succeed.

Implementing this type of strategy can lead to improvement in employee satisfaction and a boost in the company’s strengths, because educated employees can help your company reach its goals faster. Consider the following benefits of launching an educational program at your firm.

Happier Employees

This first benefit of employee education is also the most obvious — by showing your employees that you’re committed to their development, you’ll ensure that they’re happier, and that can mean they are less likely to look for a different job.

Some companies think the opposite is true — that if they educate their employees, the staff members will go elsewhere to seek better opportunities, but the reality is that happy employees don’t tend to leave as often, and have more loyalty toward you for investing in their future. An Accenture study found that for every dollar spent on educational reimbursement, one company got back $1.29 through lower employee turnover and reduced recruiting costs.

This is important for many reasons. First of all, who doesn’t want a happy staff? Those employees will reflect a positive attitude to clients, vendors and co-workers. In addition, it’s more expensive to bring on a new employee than to retain an existing one. And third, an educated staff member can then go on to train the rest of your organization with their new skills, making the educational benefits much more broad and comprehensive.

Better Productivity

If you’ve ever wondered what could boost productivity at your office, it’s likely that better skills come to mind as one of the options. After all, if someone has a strong skillset, they can handle new challenges better, take on more advanced responsibilities and often work more efficiently. This can lead to a higher rate of productivity for that staff member and their team.

In addition, several studies have shown that happy employees are more productive. As noted above, employee-supported training can lead to happier staff members, which can in turn boost productivity.

Attract Better Talent

Offering an employee reimbursement, training or professional development program can help you attract the best talent when you’re hiring, because applicants often base their interest on both salary and benefits being provided. If an applicant sees that your benefits program is robust and encourages them to increase their skills, they are more likely to want to work there. Thus, the employee education benefit helps you both bring in great new talent and retain the existing staff members.