How Does In-House / Corporate Trainings Help In Employee Retention?

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Years ago but there used to be loyalty (and pensions) that motivated a person to stay with a company. Today these motivators do not exist. There is no or very little link between training and retention of an employee. Today employee retention is driven by income and career path. Many individuals improve these areas by going with another company in lieu of staying with the same company, this is true in most of the cases.

In 1980 Dr. William Ouchi, a thought leader developed a motivational theory named as Theory Z. This theory is concerned with increasing employee loyalty to their organizations. The need of this theory originated from Japan, when in the 1980s jobs were often offered for life. This theory results in increased productivity, job security, steady employment, and so high employee satisfaction and morale.

There is yet another theory, Expectancy Theory, first proposed by Victor Vroom, it says that the expectation of a positive outcome drives motivation. As per this this theory the strength of the expectancy drives the behavior, so the expectation or likelihood of the reward is linked to the behavior. If you promise a reasonable reward for a reasonable action, their motivation increases. For example if you promise a training on latest technology and fulfil your promise, the team members’ loyalty and dedication towards their company increases. There are resources who really want to learn and grow very high, if you assign these resources (who had undertaken the training very seriously) to the project with latest technology, they would definitely like to stay much longer with their current organization

But one cannot link training to retention, when those are the only factors taken into consideration, as there are additional “environmental” factors that come into play. Consider 2 companies with highly similar training programs. One has a healthy, ’employee respecting’ environment and the other is a ‘sweatshop’ that most of the employees dislike [or hate]. In the former, employees participate in training to advance their skills and value to the company – they retain their employees. In the latter they participate to improve their job marketability and to gain time away from their boss – and their employee retention stinks. Yes, training programs can improve employee retention and value, BUT many more factors come into play when the subject is employee retention.

There is yet another type of training known as “scapegoat training”. In IT companies after a major failure and disaster and some managers takes incorrect decisions without actually doing a root cause analysis. They decide to send a group of employees to training on a subject that is similar to the issue or the problem or the cause of the problem. Generally companies offer one sided agreement where in you get locked in contract for x years with them with minimum increment and no guarantee of promotion. Further that it stated that they can lay you off but you cannot leave before a certain period.

The Human Resource department of big companies conduct a lot of professional and personal trainings. This includes yoga classes, session from experts to on personal life, how to deal with your child, sessions with dieticians and famous doctors. There is much more that is invested for retention. There is a link but reality includes other factors of the job that need to be met like learning path and career growth.

There is no age for learning and education, it is a continuous process, which can be enhanced by training or by internal learning and actually using that knowledge in your work. One can also learn a lot from his seniors and mentors by just observing them and noting down their learnings and past experiences.

The end result is, if an individual stay in the company it will be useful for both parties, but if a person had reached saturation and there is nothing left to learn then leaving the organization would be useful for him, in all cases it is useful and fruitful.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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