The Importance of Employee Development: Part 1
Welcome to our Cannabis Operators Blog and to our Learning Community!
The Typical Employee Training Scenario
Congratulations, you’ve just hired yet another employee in one of your verticals, in this case, your dispensary. Your Store Manager (or whomever you have assigned the task) just spent an hour with her completing all your onboarding documents.
You’ve introduced her to her team members and now you are ready to train her to be an effective employee with an emphasis on meeting customer expectations and mission alignment.
For the next few days, she is going to follow the Store Manager (or your training designee), which is your Employee Development strategy.
That is the typical model for new hire training and development. But is it a good training model? The answer is no for several reasons.
Your Store Manager has a whirlwind of other tasks s/he should be doing.
Many of your Manager’s tasks cannot be delayed so s/he assigns another person to continue the training while s/he is away. Hopefully, that person is training in the way you want. There is no guarantee of consistency in training. And, that person also has a whirlwind of other tasks.
Your training is probably focused on the technical aspects of her duties. You train her in what to do but not on the why. There is no connection to exceptional customer service and how it aligns to your operation’s mission.
Over the next few weeks your new hire becomes frustrated because of a lack of proper initial and on-going training. Employee frustration leads to resignation and the new hire process starts over again.
What if you had a different model of employee development that not only provides consistent technical training, but also on the soft skills of how and why to be an effective team member.
What is Employee (Professional) Development?
“Employee development refers to any type of professional training employers offer to employees, so they can improve their current skills and learn new ones to further their career growth and meet your organizational mission”.
Why is Employee Development Important?
From a meta-analysis of research relating to employee development, the following are some facts that are important as you consider evaluating your employee training.
If companies provided higher-quality training and development opportunities, almost 80 percent of employees would stay longer.
Professional development is an attractive employee benefit.
Learning and development opportunities improve productivity.
Employees become more confident when given opportunity to increase their skills and knowledge, allowing them to complete work more efficiently and effectively. In addition, as employees gain more capabilities, teams can get more done without having to hire additional personnel.
Employee development boosts profitability. Research from the MIT Sloan School of Management showed that an employer’s soft skills training program led to a 250 percent return on investment within eight months.
68% of employees prefer learning at work.
One of the best ways to provide effective learning and development opportunities for your employees is to make sure they have them at their job. External sources are fine but learning on the job is what makes a difference.
10% of employees resign because of inadequate onboarding experience. (CareerBuilder, 2019)
In a global survey of 200,000 people, appreciation for work ranked as the most important factor in job satisfaction, far above attractive salary, interesting job content and flexible work models. When good job performance is rewarded with more challenging responsibilities, employees stay engaged, and have a stronger rapport with their colleagues and leadership.
Providing e-learning training opportunities increases your retention rate by 60%.
There are many methods you can use to deliver employee training. Providing online, e-learning opportunities (such as Learning Experience Platforms, courses, webinars, eBooks, etc.) increases employee retention rate by as much as 60%. This is because employees can review the materials in their own time.
Conclusion
Employee development is an integral part of all organizations, at least it should be. In the case of dispensaries, few resources are usually provided to their teams for training and development. The research validates employees value learning opportunities, and the training will have a positive effect on employee retention, thus improving customer loyalty and alignment with your mission.
Unfortunately, many companies accept employee turnover as a normal part of doing business and feel that they have little control to improve retention. In some cases, employers just don’t care about employee turnover and are willing to accept the increased costs of recruitment, development and retention.
Please join us in Part 2 of The Importance of Employee Development as we present the case of how employee onboarding and training effects your Net Profit.
Thank you for joining our learning community. As always, if you have any questions about Employee Development, do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to help you simplify your operations.