ESG Metric: Employee training
Ease of implementation: High
Suitable for: All businesses
Suggested functional lead: HR
Summary
Setting up a training budget to ensure upskilling, development and retention of your workforce. Establish the training budget either based on industry standards to by percentage of employees' salary. Once established, allocate the number of training days employees can take and set up an easy Google Form to request training. Ensure you have assig responsibility to an employee or team to check the requests and ensure you have a payment method in place.
Background Information
Providing a training budget for your employees will boost motivation, increase upskilling and development, increase retention and improve hiring. It allows you to upskill your current employees rather than employ new members of staff, which is always costly. It allows the employees to develop within the company and creates a supportive company culture. Fins Course, a UK Learning and Development (L&D) organisation, surveyed over 180 HR and L&D professionals across various UK organisations and industries. It concluded that 50% of the organisations has a training budget between £0 to £200 per employee, with only 17% spending between £201 and £400. This percentage decreased to 4% as the training budget increased, however saw a rise to 12% of organisations spending over £1000. They found that none of the organisations which spend over £300 on their training budget per employee has a retention rate of less than 6 months. They also concluded that the employee satisfaction doubled when companies spent above average on their training budget. Overall, 63% of the organisations with a rise in turnover over the last year prioritized training and development.
Implementation Steps
Calculate training budget
You can calculate your annual training budget by multiplying the total yearly salary budget by 1-3%. To determine the percentage, you can increase current budget, if it below 3%, or start at a lower percentage and work your way up. You can also determine the training budget based on industry standards or benchmark against reputable companies of similar size and industry.
Allocate number of training days
Allocate the number of days your employees can take for training. This usually ranges from 2 to 10 working days.
Set up system to request training
Set up a system for employees to easily request training. This can be done through a simple Google Form with questions regarding the cost of the training, time, length, relevance to their role, and any other specific details. Ensure you set a clear timeline for employees to send in the request prior to the training start date. Set clear boundaries on what types of training will be accepted and what will not.
Review request
Ensure the requests and reviewed frequently. Assign responsibility to a member of staff to monitor the answers of the Google Forms daily.
Set up payment system for trainings
You may want to pay for the training directly on behalf of your employee or allow the employee to pay and book it themselves with the promise that they will get refunded in their next pay check.