New Year. New website. New approach to business development!

New Year, new website, and new approach to business development. We will be a little more present on Linked In going forward, so we can build a community of interested stakeholders, who we can enjoy fascinating discussions with and share insights, tips and guides on our specialist development areas.

In a year where economies will struggle to stay out of recession and where employees will be very active in seeking roles that reward well both financially and career wise, learning will become an ever more important retention tool. Microsoft’s recent study showed that 76% of employees would stay at their company longer if they received learning and development support. That’s a hugely significant number. Imagine the benefits this delivers an organisation: More stable teams with less churn will outperform those that have to constantly educate new team members; all that shared knowledge and learning will stay and not head off to the competition; recruiting new team members takes time, a lot of time, which could otherwise be spent on the job in hand; let along the actual cost of recruitment eating at your profit margins. Then there’s the brand / EVP perception. The more churn an organisation has, the harder it is to attract new talent as the market rumour mill fills with talk of an organisation less supportive of its employees.

And it doesn’t take much. A typical development programme from The Academy might break down to a per delegate cost of between £500 and £1,000. All in, this is likely to be less than the direct (let alone indirect) costs of recruiting one person into the team. Its pretty stark when you like at it like this. But what is the typical learning budget per employee? I’ve spoken to prospective clients who allocate less than £500 / employee annually (of course more for the senior leaders, less for the more junior employees). Hopefully in a year where retention is going to be the game changer, this will change and employers will chose to invest more in developing their employees.

Get in touch to discuss how The Academy might be able to develop a bespoke training programme for your team.

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