The benefits of upskilling your staff vs recruiting

Upskilling is the process of teaching current employees new skills, and upskilling training has so many advantages, from improving employee motivation to saving the company money.

And it doesn’t have to cost a fortune!

Allow your employees to develop their own career development path and offer the time and resources to help them achieve their goals including courses and qualifications. Here are just some of the benefits of upskilling your workforce.

Employee retention

Employees who are challenged to develop and grow are often the happiest ones in an organisation. If your company works to retain tenured employees, it will prove that you are making a solid investment in people, which is sure to boost morale and productivity. Employees who are challenged to grow outside of their roles tend to get excited about what might be around the corner for them.

Customer satisfaction

If you have happy employees, you are far more likely to have happy customers. Content employees are typically more invested in the company, they promote your brand within the organization and to your customers too. Typically, happy customers tend to be loyal customers as well.

We've all head the famous Richard Branson quote "Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Expense

It is expensive to replace employees. The very cost of advertising and recruiting new staff would actually end up being more expensive than upskilling your current workforce.

Not only is it expensive, but very time consuming. Once you have recruited, there is also the time and sometimes cost involved in on-boarding and training.

Attracting talent

When a company is known to invest in its employees in terms of training and development, talented people will be naturally drawn to seek employment within that company, as there are many opportunities to develop and grow their career. By offering perks such as training and development, and being clear about your investment in people, you will attract the best talent out there.

Use distance learning to upskill staff

Distance learning is the ideal way to upskill staff, particularly for national and global companies who are based in many different locations.

Investing in distance learning courses allows you to upskill employees regardless of their location. Employees are simply given access to their course through either online or study materials. It also removes the need for employees to take time out of work to attend a college, they can fit it in around their working hours and from the comfort of their own homes.

Open Study College partner with a range of businesses to help train and develop their teams, from private to public sector, from SME's to large businesses, and from schools to charitable organisations and anything in between. If you're an employer and you'd like to find out more about what we can offer your staff, visit our employers page.