Only a few things are more often put on the back burner than employee training costs. Companies always have “higher priority” areas for budgeting. That’s why professional development mostly stays a sphere of interest only to the workforce itself. Sound familiar? It’s more than usual for the vast majority of organizations.
Why Skipping Employee Training Is a Costly Mistake
But is such a saving on training initiatives really profitable? Employees who don’t get proper training take longer to do their jobs. They make more mistakes. They’re less confident and less engaged. And when they leave, you pay even more to replace and train someone new.
Replacing one employee with another costs you up to 2.0 times their annual salary each time. Also, keep in mind that the average length of service for a specialist today is 4.1 years, and turnover is rising before our eyes.
In the end, people leave not because they want to but because they don’t see a path forward. When learning is missing, loyalty disappears. For younger workers, this is even more urgent — 44 percent of 18–34-year-olds consider quitting due to weak learning options. On the flip side, 94 percent of employees say they’d stay longer if their company invested in their careers.
The Real Price of Poor Workforce Development
Of course, we’re not here to talk about workforce development solely as something that only employees benefit from. Yes, every company can cite an example to justify not wanting to spend a lot of money on a training initiative when an employee who has had time and money invested in them ends up quitting.
At first, this argument might seem valid. But at the same time, unlike the employee who left and “took with them” a backpack of knowledge from your organization, your other employees continue to work for you. They continue to spend a lot of time asking questions, fixing errors, or waiting for help. That’s hours lost each week — across every employee. Multiply that across a team, and you’re losing thousands of productive hours each year.
Even if such downtime in the workflow can be written off as “typical” for business, when it comes to sales training — or worse, compliance training — the potential losses due to the lack of professional development can lead to serious consequences.
Just ask Capital One — they paid $80 million in penalties after a major data breach. Not all of that ties to training gaps, but clear, consistent knowledge sharing can help reduce those risks. In addition, your company will be perceived by employees as one that has a strong corporate culture around learning and development.
How to Both Save Budget and Train Staff
So, we have come to the following decision — we need to invest in initiatives such as skill enhancement and knowledge transfer for our employees to continue to develop and bring value to the company.
Of course, we do not expect each of our specialists to work in the company for 40 years. This was possible and respected in the last century. Now, we all understand that times have changed.
Therefore, our task is to choose the right tool that will help us with this. When discussing modern staff training solutions, it’s essential to recognize that scattered documents, outdated PDFs, and chaotic in-person sessions with numerous printed materials are not about speed. This method will not help keep everyone synchronized.
Modern learning management systems (LMSs) are precisely that. An LMS gives you a smarter, faster, and cheaper way to train (as you trivially save on trainers, coffee breaks, and downtime that are inevitable during traditional training).
Companies that provide professional training and use LMS report real gains. They increase employee retention by up to 92 percent. That’s huge, especially at scale.
What benefits do you get from adopting LMS?
- You can train 5 people or 5,000 without adding new trainers or increasing costs.
- You can see who completed what, identify the gaps, and determine which courses actually help.
- You can provide your employees with various learning styles, including videos, quizzes, manuals, and interactive content.
- You can update all materials at once, and tomorrow, your teams will have access to new compliance policies, etc.
More than 72 percent of organizations now say digital learning gives them a competitive advantage. Why stay among those who are behind?
Train Now or Pay Later
Above, we mentioned the main benefits that await you if you adopt an LMS as a way to prioritize training in your organization.
We also want to emphasize once again that when it comes to employee training — whether it’s workshops, seminars, or online courses — continuing to do nothing is the worst strategy.
Companies that invest in training see better retention, higher productivity, and fewer costly mistakes. An LMS is just a tool in this equation that makes training easier and cheaper.
Among the options for investment, you can choose a subscription-based training platform or opt for an open-source LMS that doesn’t require software payment. To better understand these subtleties, we recommend reading the guide that walks you through everything you need to know about different types of LMSs, along with their features and benefits.
Whether you’re hiring your tenth employee or your thousandth, investing in training through an LMS isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s a business decision that pays for itself.
