Organizations shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming their leadership is effective at training employees just because they’re proficient with other managerial tasks. Their lack of training skills may be costing organizations in terms of lowered productivity, higher employee turnover, workflow mistakes, and other avoidable issues. In an effort to explain, let’s examine the overall cost of not training leaders how to train.

The Role of Leadership Includes Training

The essential role of leadership is to effectively manage employees and operational workflows while acting as a liaison between leadership levels. Whether conscious of it or not, training is one of the main methods leaders use to accomplish this role.

Here are some examples of how leadership uses training in their organizational role:

• • initial employee onboarding
  • employee evaluations and assessments
  • correcting employee mistakes
  • counseling team members with work/life balance issues
  • teaching teams how to be productive
  • ongoing workflow process updates and retraining
  • supervisory role with process execution

The role of each leadership position will differ, yet training is always an integral part of their overall duties. Their ability to effectively convey their expertise and experience to employees will depend on the proficiency of their training skills.

The Impact of Not Training Leadership How to Train

Here are some of the adverse consequences of having leaders who lack training skills:

• • higher employee turnover rates
  • productivity issues
  • degraded workplace culture
  • mistakes and errors

Higher Employee Turnover Rates

According to a report found at SHRM, employee turnover cost U.S. employers $600 billion in 2018. The report also found that one in four employees (42 million) would leave their jobs to work for another company in 2018. This is significant considering each lost employee will cost an organization from 30% to 150% of their annual salary.

Effective training can be used to mitigate the costly impact of employee retention issues. According to a report from Gallup:

…59% of millennials say opportunities to learn and grow are extremely important to them when applying for a job. Comparatively, 44% of Gen Xers and 41% of baby boomers say the same about these types of opportunities.

Organizations can reduce employee turnover by providing training and development opportunities for leadership. In turn, leadership will have the skills needed to train and develop the employees under their supervision. This will satisfy the desires of both leadership and regular employees when it comes to training and development.

Productivity Issues

When employees aren’t being directed, led, and trained effectively, the first sign organizations will notice is reduced productivity. This directly impacts the bottom-line and puts pressure on the entire organization.

Training directly impacts productivity because when employees lack proficiency with operating systems or workflows, they’ll naturally be less productive. Productivity issues can also come from a lack of training concerning workforce dynamics; for instance, if an employee isn’t coached or trained by leadership on how to optimally deal with team personalities or workforce culture.

Degrades Workplace Culture

When leadership has the skills to train and develop employees, the workplace culture will inevitably be improved. Here are some reasons why this is true:

• • a culture of “no employee left behind” fosters trust and confidence
  • when employees have the skills needed to be productive they’ll be more content with their jobs
  • a mentor/student relationship with a boss will encourage questioning and learning
  • employees feel more confident when they have back-up expertise available with leadership
  • a culture of learning is better than a culture of being afraid to make mistakes

Essentially, when leadership knows how to effectively train and develop the workforce, an organization’s culture will transition from fear-based to learning-based. Employees will be more productive and content if they aren’t afraid of making mistakes or calling for help from their supervisors or managers.

Training gives managers the opportunity to encourage employees to ask for help and work as a team. This reduces workflow mistakes and errors from employees who are afraid to ask questions, or feel their managers aren’t accessible or responsive.

Mistakes and Workforce Issues

When an organization’s leadership lacks training skills, mistakes and workforce issues from employees will happen more often. These include technical operational mistakes, team conflict, misunderstandings, resentments, and employee turnover – all of which negatively impact the bottom-line.

Leadership must recognize which employees need tighter supervision and more training, in order to prevent mistakes and workforce issues. Training helps leadership recognize struggling employees and potential workforce conflict, in order to focus on training them individually to resolve ineptitude, team conflict, or work/life balance issues.

Workforce issues can range from an employee calling in sick too often to a toxic employee causing disunity and conflict within teams. Resolving these issues takes leadership skills from managers; if leadership isn’t confident with their ability to train troubled employees with correction and discipline, workforce issues will go unresolved and cause even more damage.

The Importance of Training Leadership How to Train

Training leaders how to train gives them the confidence and skills needed to effectively train and manage employees. Training skills will help leaders streamline training processes, efficiently manage operational workflows, and optimally lead workforce teams.

Essentially, organizations need their leadership training and development efforts to positively impact the entire workforce. In application, this means fostering leadership that can effectively impart their expertise and experience with employees under their authority. Ongoing leadership training can help organizations realize this goal, as it teaches their supervisors, managers, and executives the skills needed to train and manage others within the workforce.

By training leadership how to train employees effectively, organizations will improve their workplace culture (producing a learning-based vs. fear-based culture), increase their employees’ productivity, mitigate employee turnover, reduce technical operational mistakes, and prevent/resolve workforce issues.

Leaders who have the skills to train (incl. technical and soft skills) will help organizations reach their workforce’s potential and improve the bottom-line. Training leaders how to train will refine those with an aptitude to teach while bringing others up to speed – not every leader knows how to train effectively.

Once organizations realize the importance of training their leadership how to train, the next step is integrating an effective training and development program to foster this leadership skill. Partnering with a quality leadership training service that offers on-site, on-demand, and virtual courses will give organizations the flexible options needed for ongoing training and development efforts. If interested in learning how NexaLearning can help, please contact us today.

Download our whitepaper “Great Leaders Are Made Not Born”. Find out the benefits and strategies for implementing a leadership training program. One of the top challenges faced by Human Resources and Learning and Development Professionals across all companies in all industries – Developing Leadership. Learn how to develop your leadership team.