Companies known for being one of the Best Places To Work know that to keep their people happy they need to invest in their employees’ growth and that includes training. They train for retention and expansion.

Your people want to do something new and you want them to be excited about their work. Far too often, teams are short staffed and single-threaded, bashing away at their keyboards with their heads down and earbuds in. To keep them energized and to allow them to grow, you need to give them room to excel and expand.

Train to Retain. Train to Expand.

When you train to retain you expand your capabilities as a unit, you excite and engage your employees. And it shouldn’t end with training. Consider giving your team the room to grow and expand their expertise with cross-training. Allow your people to try their hand at what other’s do in the department or unit. Depending upon your organization structure and the roles employees hold, you might consider allowing them to explore what others are doing in a more parallel or lateral role, or if their role is part of a larger process let them experience roles vertically, up or downstream.

Sage Training Tips for Management:

1. Don’t allow projects to be put into your pipeline without training dollars allocated to them. The time to get the training budget you need is when the project is first created and championed.
2. Hire a third party like MAX to train your people instead of someone on your own staff. If your staff delivers the training, they will never be able to step away from the trainer role. They will always be the “go to” person for everyone they train.