Statistics have shown that despite increasing wages, employees are still on the lookout for that better offer and would sooner leave you than love you.
In the war for talent, organisations need to carefully analyse not only why their staff turnover may be so high, but also what effective retention strategies they are using are and how they can be enhanced.
One avenue that often plays a critical role in aiding staff retention is training and development. And at the end of the day, personnel development is really all about personal development. In today’s competitive employment market, pay and conditions are only part of the challenge of attracting and retaining the right staff. Many top candidates pick and choose between several employers and the most forward thinking among today’s up-and-comers are looking beyond the current job offer. In such an environment, opportunities for personal development are an increasingly attractive part of any employment package. Potential employees want to know that they will continue to develop skills and knowledge in their new occupation. As such, savvy employers are ensuring that personal development is a selling point of their strategy to attract and retain staff. This is particularly the case at more senior levels. Many companies provide training programmes for new employees but neglect the ongoing needs of executives and junior executives. The two obvious methods of staff development are training and mentoring programmes. The differences between training and mentoring were once fairly clear. Training involved specific, task focused interventions relating to the acquisition of particular skills and lasted for a predetermined time frame.
Training also tended to be group focused. By contrast, mentoring was an ongoing, fairly informal and unstructured process in which an experienced mentor would provide friendly advice and support rather than actual teaching to their mentee or protégé. However, with the advent of individual coaching as a training mechanism and the development of more structured mentoring, the line between training and mentoring has become increasingly blurred.
Whether your company decides to describe a relationship as training, coaching or mentoring, the principles for determining the need, type and provider of development for your staff will be similar.
Training needs analysis
Conducting a detailed analysis of the type of training your company needs would appear to be an absolute must. However it is a step that is neglected surprisingly often. HR consultant Sam Lau explains, “Training Needs Analysis (TNA) should be a no-brainer but many companies overlook it entirely. They know that they should be doing some kind of training and they have often booked the sessions with a trainer or coach, often without considering what is most needed in their company, or what exactly they are hoping to get out of the programme.” A training needs analysis is a systematic way to investigate your business training needs and to obtain all the information you require to make informed decisions about the most appropriate and most cost effective training programmes. A good training programme needs analysis will involve a number of stages:
1. Assessment
Before you begin training your staff, you should assess the skills and knowledge that your staff currently holds. This will enable you to assess areas of weakness, but also reveal potential sources of knowledge transfer within your company. In the rage for outsourcing that has occurred in recent years, many companies have neglected potential sources of knowledge within their own company. This is particularly relevant when it comes to coaching and mentoring. Arguably the perfect mentor for any junior executive in your company is a more senior executive in the same company.
2. Analysis
After the assessment phase, it is important to analyse the differential between the skills currently held by your company and the skills needed to move your company forward. In terms of staff retention, this will involve not only analysing the skills most needed by your company, but also a consultation of key staff about their learning needs and wants. Naturally the focus of most HR departments is how a training programme will directly benefit the company’s bottom line. In some cases this is easy to quantify. For example, if your company is hoping to expand the business it does with the Mainland but your staff members lack the necessary linguistic skills, then the benefits of Putonghua lessons are obvious. However, in the case of an up-and-coming executive who is struggling with the stress levels of their new job, the benefits of mentoring from a senior member of the firm are less tangible but will usually be demonstrated in the long-term retention and development of that staff member. Thus, a sensible HR department will not lose sight of the ameliorating effect training, coaching and mentoring can have on morale and staff retention.
3. Plan appropriate training
Your assessment and analysis should guide your decisions about not only your company’s training needs, but also your decisions about how best to meet those needs. Once the type of training needed has been identified, the next step will be to obtain a training provider, either from within the company or externally. As has been mentioned, many companies overlook talent within their own firm. Whether it is more cost effective to conduct internal training or to outsource training will vary depending on the exact needs identified at the analysis stage. However, in the case of mentoring or coaching it is advisable to consult both the mentor and mentee in the process. Student Advisor at City University, Andrew Phung, says that many companies are, “Strangely heavy handed when it comes to pairing mentors and mentees. The company goes to great trouble to identify potential coaches or mentors and then assigns them without adequately considering the views of the other half of the equation.” Phung contends that a successful coaching or mentor/mentee relationship is about chemistry and that means that both parties have to view the relationship as productive and helpful. Thus, greater consultation must be given to the mentee.
Conclusion
Training and development is but one aspect of an effective strategy to reduce staff turnover and in turn improve retention. Furthermore, due to the personal attention inherent in the mentoring process as part of a T&D campaign, the probability that staff will stay onboard is multiplied 100-fold.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
