Invest in your employees’ training

Investing in the training and development of your employees is no longer a luxury. It’s a must.

Your employees are your charity’s greatest asset, so nurturing your employees is key to your success. 

Benefits of training

From a HR perspective, training can boost employee engagement levels, improve performance and help retain key talent.

In brief, it can: 

• Reduce a high employee turnover
• Create a pool of employees who may be able to move into more senior roles
• Help employees feels more valued
• Give employees a wider understanding of the business
• Better equip your employees – training enables their skills to remain up to date and fill in some gaps
• Allow your employees to stay ahead of the competition
• Enhance your reputation and attract a wider pool of candidates
• Tackle any issues that your workplace is facing, for example, if you have noticed a team is struggling with some software, some training can help them comes to grips with it
• Enhance operational efficiency

Cost

The great news for charities is that investing in your employees doesn’t have to bring about a substantial financial cost. Carrying out in-house training sessions and/or using online tools can be a beneficial way to equip your employees with essential knowledge and keep costs down.

Recouping costs

If you pay out large amounts of money for external training courses, you will want to protect your charity’s interests.  It can be frustrating to train someone and watch them leave a short time after.

You can, for example, enter into a training fee agreement with the employee so that if they leave within a certain period of completing the training, they need to pay back the costs.

You can implement a sliding scale system, for example, if they leave while the course is ongoing or up to six months after, they pay 100% and if they leave between six and nine months after completion, they pay 75%. With the sliding scale system, the main premise is that the longer they stay and the longer you benefit, the less they have to pay back.

You should also make it clear that they agree to you deducting this amount from their final salary or any outstanding payments that are due to them upon termination. This helps prevent complaints in the future.

To explore this further, call 0845 226 8393, ask for the Partnerships Legal Team and quote your ACEVO membership number