5 Benefits of Employee Training and Development

I regularly hear from L&D leaders who have been asked to cut their budgets or their teams. They feel like they're constantly having to justify the importance of their work to leadership.

So the next time someone says to you, "Who needs L&D when there's ChatGPT?," here are five data-driven benefits that you can point to.

(And yes, I've had a leader actually ask me that question.)

1. Faster time to competency 

Whether you’re onboarding new hires, partners, or customers, you want to get them up-to-speed as quickly as possible. Time spent ramping is an opportunity cost that businesses are always looking to minimize. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked by leaders if onboarding is really necessary — “Why can’t you just throw them into meetings and let them figure it out?”.

Here’s why onboarding matters. A meager 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new hires, and yet exceptional onboarding is correlated to higher employee retention and engagement. The better the onboarding, the faster the new hire can contribute in their role. You spend less time rooting around for answers and more time learning expectations for the role. 

If you’re interested in seeing why a pharmacy software company uses training videos to more effectively onboard field technicians and pharmacy partners, read more below. 

2. Better performance 

Employees who are properly onboarded are more likely to understand and meet the expectations for their role. But training doesn’t end with onboarding. Companies who invest in their employees' ongoing development see a positive impact on performance. 

Of course, simply training employees does not lead to better performance. (I think we can all speak to that from personal experience.) 

For training to impact behavioral outcomes aligned with business KPIs, it needs to be designed with measurement in mind. Otherwise, you’re just churning out content, and adding to the readiness debt, the gap between the skills your employees need and what they can confidently do because of training. 

3. Higher engagement and retention

Companies want to be an "employer of choice" — a place where top talent wants to work. For Gen Z, that means an employer who supports their development, and a manager who teaches and mentors them.

Although the order may change year-over-year, learning and development (often framed as the opportunity for career advancement) is consistently one of the top priorities for younger employees in the workforce. They're looking for an organization that they can grow with, and if their employer doesn't provide that, they'll look elsewhere. This isn't about job hopping so much as cultural alignment. They want to work somewhere whose values align with theirs.

US businesses lose $1 trillion annually in voluntary turnover. In over half of attrition cases, exiting employees say the manager or organization could have done something differently so they would've stayed. Instead, companies spend between one-half to two times the employee's annual salary replacing them. Invest your money in training employees, instead of hiring their replacement .

Five Below, a retailer, cut their training production costs 97% while improving learning outcomes. It is possible to be cost effective and impactful with training. 

4. Greater internal mobility

72% of L&D leaders say internal mobility is more important than ever. In my opinion, that's largely attributable to AI. We're seeing job descriptions evolve rapidly, and traditional career ladders are starting to collapse.

This generation's workforce will likely see their career journeys as "squiggly" (to quote Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis) or non-linear. Someone may start in one position, develop a new skill they can execute with AI, and end up in a completely new role in the same company. We're already seeing that with the rise of high-impact ICs, and conversations around ICs "managing" AI agents.

By providing opportunities for your employees to develop new skills — whether through formal learning, peer learning in rotations or mentorship pairings, or professional development funds they use at their discretion — you're creating a more agile workforce. 

This allows employees to take their institutional knowledge and apply it in ways you never expected. You won't have to hire externally for every critical role. Designing for this flexibility in your training and development is how you build that capacity.

5. More organizational agility 

"39% of key skills required in the job market will change by 2030," according to employers surveyed for the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report.

That means over a third of the skills your employees have today will be replaced by a new set of skills. But which skills? That's up to you to figure out.

Only 14% of companies have the infrastructure to continuously identify skill gaps and mobilize their talent (through training and enablement) in response. These companies know they can't predict the future, but they can build a capability that better anticipates skill gaps and works to close them. That's a massive advantage.

Investing in your employees' learning and development isn't a benefit or perk. It's what determines whether your business will continue to perform. Companies with this capability are more confident in their profitability, recruitment and retention, and ability to align talent to shifting priorities. 

If you want to see how Synthesia can help you build a more agile function, like we did for Xponential Fitness, reach out.