Can Training Increase Employee Retention?

With today’s changing landscape employers are looking at retaining their current work force and employees are looking at expanding their knowledge base.   So can offering training opportunities increase employee retention or will the employees take the training and move on to other companies?  This question has plagued employers for years and the answer is not a simple one.

Training can be an important component in employee retention.  I would not say that it is the only component in this complex issue of retention.  According to Training Magazine “The fear for many companies is that they spend time and money developing people, only to see them take those newly acquired skills to another company. However, training actually can increase employee retention, when the training reinforces the value of the employee. In addition, a well-designed training program plays a critical part in nurturing associates’ psyches. Associates want to feel that the job they do is important to the success of the business and that the business is investing time and money in them to have the job done correctly, and at the highest level.

 

Training also allows associates the opportunity to learn new skills and hone existing skills they bring to the job. Being able to grow in a position and feel good about the job they are doing is important to an individual and their view of the organization. By investing the appropriate training in an employee, they will develop a greater sense of self-worth as they become more valuable to the company. The company, too, will gain specific benefits from training and developing its workers, including increased productivity, reduced employee turnover, and decreased need for constant supervision.

We can see that we can increase retention and the knowledge base of our company expediently through training and development of our workforce.  In addition the cost of training can be reduced through web training and automated training courses. 

Transformational Theory

        Transformational leadership works to enhance motivation, morale and performance of the followers through different psychological tools.  This is achieved by helping the follower or sub ordinate identify with the project and organization.  The leader helps the follower to feel that they are a role model and a point of inspiration for other team members.  This helps to give ownership to the follower.  The leader uses the strengths and weaknesses of the followers to align them with the correct tasks to give the follower the best chance for success.

       James MacGregor Burns (1978) first introduced the concept of transforming leadership in his descriptive research on political leaders, but this term is now used in organizational psychology as well (Bass & Riggio, 2006).  Burns explained that the process is one in which leaders and followers help each other to advance to a higher level of moral and motivation.   He introduced to concepts transforming leadership and transactional leadership. The transforming approach changes the life of both the people and the organization.  This changes the perceptions and aspirations of the followers and the leaders.  The transactional approach is a give and take relationship, this relationship both the leader and the followers take an active role in the formation of success.  This theory supports a leader to live by example and create the traits that they are looking for the follower to display.  

       Bernard M. Bass (1985) continued the studies originated by Burns Theories (1978) by looking at the tools that were inspiring the transforming and transactional leadership.  Bass replaced the transforming with Transformational leadership expanding on the methods by adding measurements to the impact on leaders and followers and their performance.  These leaders are measured by the influence that they have on their followers.  The followers have respect for the leader and work harder towards the goal and the leader is inspired by the followers, which in turn makes the leader work harder toward the goals and objectives.

       This research has been ongoing for the last 30 years and the analysis has shown that transformational and transactional leadership positively predicts a variety of performance outcomes including individual, group and organizational level variables.