We have experienced a historic shift in labor trends, post pandemic. Gone are the days of a workforce striving for the “gold watch” at retirement. Or a 9-5 workforce tethered to a specific HQ location. Today’s workforce can work from anywhere, easily switch industries, functions or jobs multiple times in their careers.
According to CNBC, 2022 was the ‘real year of the great resignation’ when a record 50.5 million people quit their jobs. The majority of these “quitters” remained in the workforce with either the intent of finding higher salaried jobs or switching careers. These open roles left employers scrambling. Employee turnover rates in the U.S. have hit an all-time high. With so many employees entering and exiting roles so quickly – effective employee training is becoming essential; especially when a company has invested in customized tools and strategic applications.
The Importance of Training
While Microsoft Excel continues to be a versatile and ubiquitous application, current corporate financial and operational complexity has resulted in a need for more powerful, specialized and, consequently, complex system solutions. Corporations have found themselves investing heavily in new software and technology.
Training on the technology is usually very front heavy, with not many companies having the infrastructure for or giving the requisite credence to the importance of advanced, formalized, continuous training. These companies have typically relied on training happening peer-to-peer or on the job system training. With this new employee high turnover revolution, companies wanting to continue to grow and profit from their systems will have need to create a formalized system training.
The RPE thought leadership article Personnel Turnover: How to address the continual need for new training explores the advantages and disadvantages of the three most common forms of training.
Keeping Technology Up to Date
As important as it is to provide comprehensive onboarding experience with a plan for continuous advanced learning; it is just as crucial to keep company technology up to date. While many companies can get discouraged by the financial burden system upgrades can cost, they don’t realize the heavier cost of needing to do a complete overhaul because they waited too long or shear lack of productivity that comes from using an outdated tool.
BusinessNewsDaily.com’s article Save Money and Boost Productivity by Upgrading Your Technology provided some valuable points on why it is beneficial to companies to invest in upgrades when available. Besides the stalling of work efficiencies, in today’s cloud base world, employers can also run the risk of cybersecurity hacks, frustrated employees lead to lack of productivity, and having continuous system failures ultimately impacts your business and customers. RPE reviews the most common causes of underutilized solutions and how it can affect sales, margin, labor costs and employee satisfaction in this thought leadership article Are you getting the most out of your software?
The adage “You have to spend money to make money” continues to readily apply, especially when it comes to training and system upgrades.
