Advice provided by Worknest.
Investing in the training and development of your employees is no longer a luxury. It’s a must.
Your employees are your business greatest asset, so nurturing your talent and equipping them with all the necessary skills is key to your commercial success.
Benefits of training
From a HR perspective, training can boost employee engagement levels, improve performance and help retain key talent. In brief, it can:
- Reduce a high employee turnover
- Create a pool of employees who may be able to move into more senior roles
- Help employees feels more valued
- Give employees a wider understanding of the business
- Better equip your employees – training enables their skills to remain up to date and fill in some gaps
- Allow your employees to stay ahead of the competition
- Enhance your reputation and attract a wider pool of candidates
- Tackle any issues that your workplace is facing, for example, if you have noticed a team is struggling with a particular skill or task, some training can help them comes to grips with it
- Enhance operational efficiency
Cost
The great news is that investing in your employees doesn’t have to bring about a substantial financial cost. Carrying out in-house training sessions and/or using online tools can be a beneficial way to equip your employees with essential knowledge and keep costs down.
You should always think carefully about your business interests and employees’ needs. You should only undertake training programmes that are truly worth it – they should be useful, effective and be able to improve the employee’s performance and effectiveness. They should also be in line with what your business’ goals.
Recouping costs
If you pay out large amounts of money for external training courses, you will want to protect your business’ interests. It can be frustrating to train someone and watch them leave a short time after.
You can, for example, enter into a training fee agreement with the employee so that if they leave within a certain period of completing the training, they need to pay back the costs.
You can implement a sliding scale system, for example, if they leave while the course is on-going, or up to six months after, they pay 100% and if they leave between six and nine months after completion, they pay 75%. With the sliding scale system, the main premise is that the longer they stay and the longer you benefit, the less they have to pay back.
You should also make it clear that they agree to you deducting this amount from their final salary or any outstanding payments that are due to them upon termination. This helps prevent complaints in the future.
Statutory requests
Some employees have the right to request time off work for study or training purposes. To be eligible, they must:
- be an employee
- have worked for their employer for a minimum of 26 weeks
- have not made any requests in the last 12 months
- work in a business with at least 250 people.
This does not extend to, for example, agency workers, self-employed or someone aged 16 to 18 who is expected to take part in education or training.
Employees can also request training or study that improves their effectiveness at work and the performance of their employer's business. Employers are not legally required to pay for this training or study. However, you may decide to pay the total or part of the fees if you believe that it will be of benefit to your business.
Once an application has been received, the employer has 28 days to either accept the employee’s request or meet with the employee to discuss the request. The employee may be accompanied to the meeting by a union representative or another colleague.
An employer does have the right to refuse a request. The law states that the permissible grounds for refusal include that the study, or training, would not improve the employee’s effectiveness at work and performance of the employer’s business; it would generate extra costs for the business, or the work would not be able to be reorganised amongst existing members of staff.
If you have any questions about eligibility, contact the Association Advisory Service who can provide you with useful guidance – see Benefits