Most savvy business leaders know the benefits of investing in employee training. For starters, your employees will notice and appreciate your investment in their career growth. And companies that invest in employee training have a 24 percent higher profit margin than those who spend less on training. However, reaping impressive financial benefits from employee training can be difficult if you don’t have any workforce analytics to help you make decisions.
For example, what type of training should you invest in? Which employees or departments could benefit most from learning new skills? Could training help you fill a talent gap?
Connecting your Learning Management System (LMS) to a business intelligence (BI) software can combine your robust reporting and analytics on employee training with other HR, sales, and financial data. The intersection of all of this data is where workforce analytics happen, and the trends you see there can help you answer the questions that give you the insight to create a successful employee training strategy.
4 Ways Workforce Analytics Can Help With Employee Training
By using an LMS platform with a workforce analytics tool, you can gain insight into important information about your team, maximize the productivity of your staff, and position your company for growth.
Create a clear training strategy
How do you decide what type of employee training to offer and to whom? Oftentimes, organizations rely on management teams to tap talented team members and start investing in their future. But what if analytics tell a different story? Using actual data (rather than gut feelings), you can better match people’s skills to new positions and learn more about which abilities they can enhance. Once you have that information, you can create a training strategy that will strengthen your employees and your company.
Identify talent gaps
Determining what type of talent you need can be a frustrating problem. Sometimes a talent gap doesn’t present itself until a major change occurs, such as an employee quitting or a new client coming on board. Applying analytics to your talent supply can tell you more about how your workforce behaves.
For example, why do people tend to leave your company? What benefits seem to entice workers to stay? What type of training could help fill talent gaps without having to make a new hire? Workforce analytics can help you identify these patterns, make predictions, and then act accordingly to do what’s best for your staff and your bottom line.
Create new channels for employee engagement
Lack of employee engagement can be a serious problem for your business. According to a recent Gallup poll, 51 percent of the workforce is not engaged, costing between $450 and $500 billion a year in lost productivity. Workforce analytics may help you keep an eye on employee engagement and productivity, giving you an opportunity to see how an investment in employee engagement could improve your team’s performance.
In some cases, employee training can help improve engagement, as it helps employees feel that you are invested in their future. Other studies have shown that transparency about the company’s financials and future, more flexibility, and rewards for employee loyalty can improve engagement as well.
Achieve your desired results
Managing your staff is all about finding ways to help them reach their full potential. Armed with data insights, you can identify patterns and make predictions about what your employees can achieve. Once you know what your team can accomplish, you can clearly state your goals for them and the company, invest in any training or additional staff you need and empower everyone to succeed.
All in all, workforce analytics can tell you a lot about your staffing successes and shortcomings. One way to hang on to your best people is to invest in training and help your team develop new skills that will serve them–and your company–in the long run.
Author’s Bio: Megan Pacella is a writer for TechnologyAdvice.com. She is a Nashville-based freelance writer specializing in healthcare, wellness, and lifestyle content. In addition to writing for national outlets such as USA Today, she works with a variety of healthcare companies to create patient engagement and education programs.
