7 Reasons Why Every Manager Needs Employee Retention Training

Experts tend to agree that training increases employee retention.

But here’s a more nuanced question: can you train your managers in such a way that specifically raises employee retention rates?

According to LSA Global, “With the right employee retention training, tools, knowledge and support, your people managers can dramatically impact your organization’s ability to identify and retain your most strategic and productive employees…”

Employee retention training for managers is useful for all of these reasons:

1. Your managers can help make that first year a good one. The majority of all attrition occurs in the first year of employment, according to the knowledgeable staff at TalentKeepers. Treating employees right during the critical early stages of employment has been proven to enhance retention. Train your managers to regularly provide employees with performance feedback, training (we can help with this!), career opportunities, and acknowledgement for positive contributions.
2. Managers often play a key role in the hiring process, which is an important early step in the developing relationship with any potential employee. Train managers to ensure that there’s a good match between employees and your organization during the hiring process, and retention is less likely to be an issue down the line.
3. Ditto for onboarding. Engaging employees during those first weeks on the job sets the tone for the rest of their lifecycle within your organization. Coach your managers to provide frequent communication and plenty of self-directed training for new folks during onboarding. People generally want to put their best foot forward, and they will leave if they don’t feel knowledgeable enough to do a good job.
4. Managers are the primary interface between the organization and the individual. Your retention strategy should aim to move the needle at both the individual and the organizational levels, and your managers are uniquely situated to have a very direct impact on both those areas.
5. If you want to transform your workforce into a high employee retention culture, you need significant buy-in and participation from your organization’s managers. Let’s face it: culture change is HARD. But it’s also central to how you operate in the world. If you want an organizational culture that says, “We value our employees and want to keep great talent on our team,” then all of leadership, and managers especially, need to be walking that talk.
6. Retention rate is directly correlated with employee satisfaction, and research shows that an employee's immediate surroundings and direct supervisor are critical for employee engagement. Train your managers to create a workplace where people thrive, and you will be rewarded with the retention results that you seek (plus higher productivity, and sustained performance, too).
7. Employee retention training is smarter and cheaper than replacing team members. The cost of unwanted employee turnover is painfully high. Most estimates place the cost around 1.5 to 2 times an employee’s annual salary. The cost of a well-aimed training initiative will be money much better spent.

Obviously, training is the common theme here. Retention training for managers, and also skills training for new employees, especially during onboarding and that first year. A great first step is to set up an affordable online training solution that all employees can easily access to support on-the-job learning. We invite you to check out our eBook: Skills Training in a Box – How to Implement Training.