Companies spend considerable amounts of money on training their employees. According to one expert, large companies with 10,000 or more employees spend $13 million per year on employee training on average; companies between 1,000 and 9,999 employees spend $3.7 million per year on average; and small companies with fewer than 1,000 employees spend $290,000.
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Unfortunately, that money isn’t always well spent. Why? Because all too often, employees fail to be appropriately engaged in training that is offered to them.
Reasons for Lack of Engagement
There are a number of reasons that employees might not be engaged in training activities, such as not understanding the benefits, not having sufficient time, or simply not being aware of the opportunities that are available to them.
But another potential issue could simply be a lack of proper incentives. If an employee is told to complete a training program, he or she will likely do it to avoid blatantly disobeying his or her boss, but that doesn’t mean the employee will be engaged.
So, what if there were a financial incentive to completing the training?
The Positive Potential of Training Incentives
Because companies spend so much money on training employees in order to make them more valuable to the organization, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that compensation, or incentives, might be tied to the completion of certain types of training.
Consider the following scenario for new hires: A new employee who recently graduated from school is brought in for a position that pays $XX,XXX per year.
In order to achieve that base salary, the employee is expected to acquire certain skills considered essential for the proper performance of the job. When the employee is first hired, he or she is paid 50% of the $XX,XXX per year base salary.
Upon completion of phase 1 of a training program, he or she is elevated to 65% of the base pay. Upon completion of phase 2, he or she goes up to 80% of the base pay, etc. And, the company could go a step further by providing the opportunity to earn 10% above the base pay if the employee completes certain advanced training above and beyond the base expectations.
Employee training is critical for staff development. The challenge is keeping them engaged and focused. For companies that have been struggling with justifying their investment in employee training, the incentives may simply not be properly aligned. Are there opportunities to gain that alignment by thinking seriously about how compensation might be tied to training completion?