Retraining a Key Skill in Retaining & Upskilling Employees
The business environment is evolving rapidly by each passing day, thus it is mandatory for every employee to keep themselves updated and be market ready. Companies now vouch on job retraining programs as the measure to enhance their employees’ skillsets as per to the company requirement and employee preference, at the company’s cost. Clutch’s survey reports indicates that around 70 percent of employees prefer to participate in the employer-provided job retraining program, as they want to improvise at their jobs.
Sean Pour, Co-Founder & Marketing Manager at SellMax, states, “Most employees don’t want to be complacent, they want to keep growing. People feel bad when they feel like their skills aren’t advancing.”
Importance of Retraining
The job retraining program would provide ultimate opportunity to expand the employee’s knowledge base, as many employees would have lost track or just have minimal knowledge on certain skills. These retraining programs help such employees to develop the required skills. This would not only improvise the employee performance but also boost their confidence, as they acquire better industry knowledge and responsibilities post the training. This confidence would push them further to perform even better and also allow them to think out of the box and come up with new ideas and excel at work.
The tech giant Infosys is planning to double the salaries of the employees who successfully complete the reskilling programs, to cut down on the attribution rate of the company, which has elevated close to 20 percent. This retraining program will also benefit the employees by providing them with the new career options, especially the ones looking for domain change. In addition, this program would hugely benefit the mid-level techies, who are in their early 40’s to upgrade their skills and progress in their career. As it’s not an easy task for these techies to switch back and undergo training all by themselves as the fresher’s. These retraining programs are the investments made by the employer on their employees, which will reap the benefit in the longer run.
Retraining over hiring
The companies find it very difficult to hire the candidates with suitable skill sets for the required job profile, but many organizations believe that hiring is cost effective, simpler and faster as compared to retraining the existing employees on new skills, wasting several weeks or months over it. On the contrary, it is effective and simple to retrain the existing employees who are already accustomed to the work culture of the organization. In addition, dismissal or termination of the new joinee can cost the company half or two-third of the employee’s annual salary; furthermore, hiring includes advertising cost, recruitment fee, resources, induction and administrative training cost without any assured productivity.
Employees Preference
Around 19 percent of the employees prefer tuition assistance for classes outside their company, and intra-company classes & workshop to learn new skills. On the other hand, around seven percent of employees are less likely to expect the expanded access to learning resources such as books, videos, and online courses. Thus the company should consider the employee preference for retraining, and also make sure it strikes the chord right with the company’s requirement.
Nearly 70 percent of the employees who participated in the survey and attended the job retraining program were satisfied and found it useful. Experts say the job retraining program, promotes the overall growth of the organization by improved employee retention and maximized productivity
Carella says that a happy workforce is a motivated workforce. Retraining is an opportunity for companies to think about their larger strategy and bridge two priorities: the future of the company and the future of the people who work for it.
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