Investing in your employees, specifically with external training, is a great way to motivate, engage and essentially retain your staff. However, time and time again, I have ran into business owners who are frustrated. "I just spent $1,500 on a course for X and now they've handed in their two weeks notice and they are leaving!"
While sometimes it feels like you have no choice but to let them go, a smart business owner should always ensure they have some measures put in place that at least makes the employee "think" before they go and look for other opportunities.
For example, in most of the companies I have supported I have created a form that each employee signs off on before attending any type of training. If the training is less than X dollars, they must stay for a minimum of 3 months. As the cost of the training goes up, so must the time they stay. If they choose to leave prior to the end of the term, they need to pay back the course in full (and I'm a hard-ass, I don't even pro-rate the amount...a deal is a deal in my books!) And when they leave, I take it off their final pay (after taxes).
Another idea is to give them an increase in salary after they have taken the course and have implemented the training for 3 months. Now that you have provided them training, in essence their external worth IS indeed more. I don't necessarily believe in giving a raise once training is done - but only after you've actually seen the results of the training. There is nothing worse than to cram a bunch of stuff into an employee's head and then for them to think it's okay to not use it in the future.
Just remember, you do have a choice as to how deal with investing in your employees. I don't recommend saying yes to training just for the sake of training - make sure it's going to do what you need it to do and always ensure it's going to motivate, engage and retain the staff member. Otherwise you're just making it that much easier for the competition.
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