Gone are the days where employees stayed at their jobs their entire life; now staying for three to five years is considered normal. But replacing staff should be as easy as placing an ad in the papers, right?

Wrong.

According to Oxford Economics, it can cost up to £30,614 (and seven months) for a company to replace a departing employee. This cost is from:

• the lost output the company experiences while the new worker is trained up to speed, usually around 28 weeks.
• the cost of replacing that employee, including advertising costs, agency fees, time spent on interviews, etc.

With these figures, it’s no wonder why many small and medium-sized businesses are reluctant to invest in employee training. Training them, only to lose them later, simply doesn’t seem to be worth it.

But is this attitude helpful or self-serving? Should the possibility of staff leaving determine whether you train them or not? What happens if they don’t leave and you’ve missed the chance to improve your business? Taking this view is narrow-minded and can potentially be dangerous to business longevity.

Benefits of Staff Training

Training employees should be an essential activity for all organisations. Apart from avoiding recruitment expenses, here are some more benefits of staff training:

• It empowers employees with the knowledge and skills they need to increase their contribution to the business.
• It improves business performance and productivity.
• It improves staff morale, loyalty and staff retention – by investing in them, you’re showing them how much you value them.
• It leads to a reduction in wasted time and materials.
• It leads to a reduction in staff turnover and absenteeism.

It’s also important to mention here that, on average, companies that invest at least £ 1,000 per annum on staff training earn higher profit margins than those who don’t.

Selecting a Training Provider

However, for those companies that do want to upgrade their staff’s skills, choosing a training provider can be difficult. There are around 12,300 private training providers in the UK alone, all with different areas of expertise and delivery methods. So what should you pay attention to when looking for a vendor?

The following are key questions to ask any prospective training provider. The answers to these questions can help you narrow down your options so you can find the right fit for your staff.

• Where can you deliver training?
• How will your training improve my staff’s performance?
• How many clients do you work with?
• How many trainers do you work with?
• Can you develop a training programme for both large and small businesses?
• How do you measure participants’ progress?

The Benefits of Training with Activia

For interactive and learner-focused training, look no further than Activia. Our trainers use a wide range of models, case studies, and skills practice to engage delegates. We ensure all delegates leave their sessions with knowledge, information, and the tools required to excel in their field. Some of our other unique features include:

• Our Online Tools
• Skills Appraisal: For a tailored learning experience, we ask delegates to take our Skills Appraisal test. This is to assess their proficiency and advise them on the best courses to take.
• Course Creator: Looking to brush up on specific topics? Our Course Creator tool allows you pick and choose individual modules and create a bespoke training course. This allows you focus on getting the exact training you need with no fluff.

• The Dashboard: The dashboard provides a one-click access to your entire Activia account. From here, you can change your account settings, view your booking history, your invoices, certificates, and so on.

• Free eLearning: Using our eLearning revision platform, delegates can revisit and review the topics they covered in the course.

• The Quality of our Courses: We’ve been in the training business for over twenty years, keeping abreast of every change in the business and the training industry. At Activia, we’re constantly refining our training methods so we can deliver actionable world-class training, every single time. At our training centres, we always keep class sizes between two and a maximum of 12. In our experience, this class size ensures that all delegates get adequate attention from the instructor.

• Our Competitive Pricing –With 12 training centres in major cities across the UK, we can easily deliver group or one-on-one training, but if you’d prefer we train your staff at your office, that can also be arranged. All our prices are highly competitive due to our trading volumes, which means that we can offer delegates increased training quality at lower costs. We also offer discounts for early booking, low occupancy, and various special promotions.

To find out more about the best options for your training, then Activia’s staff are ready to help you with friendly, knowledgeable advice. If you’d like to talk to someone about your training needs and our offering, just fill in our contact form with your message and we’ll be back in touch very soon.