Training and Development in the Workplace: Why it’s Worth the Effort
“‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life. Tryna make ends meet, you’re a slave to money, then you die.” – The Verve The lyrics from this song couldn’t have been more authentic. How bittersweet it is to spend more than half of your life working just to make sure you are able to live. My philosophy is, if you are required to work to live and more than half of your life is spent on work, why not enjoy what you do? In some cases, that might be fairly easy depending on your career path. In other cases, work is not the greatest, and it is just a means for survival. This is why you, as a supervisor, hold an important responsibility to create and maintain a healthy working environment for your employees. The less rewarding or more stressful a job is, the more difficult it can be to show up and/or be mentally present day after day. Job satisfaction is a hard task, and even harder when you are not considerate of your employees. In my experience, I have witnessed the difference it makes when an employee has a supervisor who invests in them versus a supervisor who does not put in that effort or just tolerates them. Statistics also support that one key factor in retention is employee recognition. The question is, as the employer, how can you make your workplace environment a place where an employee wants to stay? Inevitably, people will get promoted. Also, people will quit or get terminated. That is just a part of the territory. However, there are things you can do as an employer to improve retention. Pour resources into your employees. It is cheaper to train and develop the staff you have than to hire new people. The first people [...]