Why training your staff breeds loyalty

The culture of staying with one employer throughout your working life is increasingly a thing of the past. For employers, this poses a major dilemma; how do you stop your staff casting eyes at potential suitors? One solution is to empower them through training.

Many businesses struggle to deal with a high staff turnover. The cost and energy of hiring someone only to lose them later down the line places a significant strain on businesses, particularly for small to medium sized organisations. As much as £30k can be spent to replace a staff member through logistical costs and the impact to productivity.

While this is mostly accepted as an inevitability in today’s working culture, one of the best ways to keep turnover rates low and retain staff is to offer training and development opportunities.

Employees value happiness over salary

Our recent study into what employees value most in the workplace found that responsibility, recognition, achievement and learning new things are all key characteristics Brits look for in a job. Training programs are an opportunity to give employees what they value most.

Train staff, make money

Apprenticeship vacancies are up 28% with businesses seeing the real benefits of training and development. Individual organisations receive a bottom line boost of £2000 per apprentice, as well as increased employee retention. Apprentices see the tangible rewards of the faith shown in them by their employer as they earn and learn at the same time benefitting from improved skills, confidence and a qualification to back them up.

Improve morale and create loyalty

Gregory White, Director of Finance and Procurement at Kent County Council, sees the shared benefits of training staff this way. “Our apprenticeship scheme has given us a great platform for the future, ensuring a sustainable workforce for the years ahead. It improves efficiency and supporting staff through training is good for morale. So it’s a win-win arrangement.”

Across every role, finance or non-finance, nurturing your employees, showing faith in them and giving them the opportunity to improve skills is a sure fire way to make them feel valued and in turn, loyal to you. What better way to show you care about your staff than investing the time and expense to train them?

Maintaining standards 

And then there are the bare necessities; employees need to maintain their skills in order to do their job and ignoring this can leave staff feeling ill-equipped and frustrated. That’s the case for any role but particularly relates to your finance staff, faced with ever changing regulations. Neglecting their skills gap and putting them in an uncomfortable position at year end can cost you their trust and also cost your business.

But what if they still leave? 

It’s a straightforward case to make; training your staff is a good thing. But there will always be the counter argument: “What if we train them and they leave?” to which the best response is “What if we do… and they stay?”.

We’ll leave the final argument to Britain’s most famous entrepreneur, Richard Branson:

“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

How AAT can help train your staff

AAT Qualifications 

Our qualifications provide the skills at the heart of every business, from basic business skills to in-depth accounting, tax and finance expertise. Click here to find the right one for your business.

Short courses

AAT Essentials, our range of one day courses, are designed for non-finance staff who deal with finance in their roles – from budgeting to understanding financial statements. Find out more about AAT Essentials courses.

Photo: Quentin Livingston began his AAT qualification at 49 for a change in career. “Being in the finance office, one is privvy to all sorts of information and I feel like I’m right at the centre of the business, which is very exciting and I learn something new everyday. And I have a fabulous boss.”

Huw Moxon is Digital Marketing Manager for Informi.