Why It’s Often Better to Train Internal Staff Than Recruit experienced resources

Hiring an experienced person can have a number of advantages. For example, you'll add a new person with a distinct set of experiences and perspectives to the team, meaning you'll get access to novel insights you might not have been able to gain by relying exclusively on your existing team.

This also opens the door to a wider range of talent opportunities; you may be able to find someone with a skillset that beats what your internal team members can currently offer.

But for most organizations and most positions, it’s often better to train internally than recruit an experienced resource. These are just some of the reasons why.

Recruiting Is Costly (and Time Consuming)

On average, employers spend $4,129 and 42 days filling an open position. That's a lot of time and a lot of money focused on filling one open position. If you're interested in finding someone with a unique skill set or if you need someone for a position that's already in high demand in this industry, those costs can quickly skyrocket.

Comparatively, training someone internally is less expensive and less time consuming, especially if you work with the right partner.

Training Reduces Onboarding Needs

Next, training an existing employee reduces the need to onboard new candidate. When you hire someone new to your organization, you need to spend a lot of time familiarizing them with your organizational culture, rules and best practices for the workplace, and your expectations for the role.

Depending on the complexity of the role and the nature of your organization, this process could take a couple of days or more than a month. During that time, you're going to suffer from lost productivity and inefficiencies as your new candidate gets up to speed.

Training someone internally does also take some time and interfere with your standard organizational practices. However, onboarding needs are reduced to almost nothing. Your employee is already familiar with this organization and the expectations you have of them. Because they signed up for this training program, they're also probably familiar with what the role is and what the job entails. You'll be able to get up and running much quicker than if you hire someone new.

Employee Training Boosts Morale

Most employees like the idea of getting training for new skills. When training is provided by employers, 71 percent of employees are interested in pursuing training and development.

Why is this the case? There are several possible explanations. For starters, people understand that when they get new skills and when they refine their existing skills, they become more valuable to an organization; in time, this can lead to more promotions and more raises. It also gives them more potential job opportunities in the future if they ever decide to leave this organization.

We also need to understand that training and development is a useful way to add novelty to the average employee's experience; rather than doing the same thing every day and accomplishing the same responsibilities, they get to do something new and possibly incorporate new responsibilities into their routine.

For all these reasons and more, employee training tends to boost morale of the employees being trained. With your employees being more engaged and happier in the workplace, they'll end up demonstrating higher levels of productivity, they'll be more likely to collaborate effectively with their team members, and your employee retention will begin to rise.

Additionally, productivity among all your employees can improve by effectively training and promoting employees from within. Your workers will see that you, as an organization, care about the future of your employees and are willing to invest in them directly.

Moreover, they see that employees who work hard and learn new things are rewarded for their efforts – so they're incentivized to also work hard and learn new things, even if they're not involved in the same training programs.

This is an interesting synergy that can affect your entire organization.

Training Affords More Role Flexibility

Training employees from within also affords you some extra flexibility when it comes to roles and responsibilities. When you hire someone new in your organization and bring them onboard, they tend to have firm expectations about what's expected of them and what responsibilities they're going to perform.

Over time, they may grow into a different position or take on additional responsibilities, but for the first few years, they're going to be almost exclusively focused on what the role demands of them.

When you train an employee, you have more wiggle room. If you need the employee to remain in their current position for a while, you can task them with a few new responsibilities as they keep up with their older sets of work. If you want to promote them to a new position, you can, and still have them train someone on their prior responsibilities.

In line with this, you have significant control over how and when you train your employees; you can begin training them when convenient, pause training if you're interrupted with other needs, and resume training again later in the future when it's convenient again.

All in all, training employees internally is better for preserving your organizational flexibility and agility.

Do you need to put together a better internal training program? Are there specific skills that your employees need to master? Readynez has the training programs and the expertise necessary to help you succeed. Contact us for more information today!