It’s widely known that providing employees with opportunities to develop their skills and capabilities is a great way to boost employee engagement and reduce turnover.  Nonetheless, it’s always nice to have extra evidence to support this belief, and the latest comes from new research from Julius-Maximilians-Universität, which found that whilst these training opportunities help retention, many companies labor under the false belief that upskilling workers will result in them jumping ship.

“On average, training significantly increases employee loyalty to the company providing training by more than ten percentage points,” the researchers explain.

The research provides a timely reminder that investing in the training of staff not only improves their productivity, but also their likelihood of remaining at the company.

“Interestingly, the retention effect also occurs in the case of training content that would enable employees to take a wage-increasing career step outside the company,” the researchers say.

Employee retention

The analysis, which consisted of over 4,300 employees from 150 German firms over a five year period, revealed that retention improved even when the training enhanced the employability prospects of the individual concerned.

Of course, that employees value the opportunity to improve their skills should come as no surprise, nor that their attachment to their employer grows when those opportunities are provided.

Nonetheless, the fact that these false beliefs persist underlines the importance of reiterating the point.  Employers should be encouraged to invest in their staff, even if the certifications they receive on account of that investment make them more attractive to other firms.