When discussing benefits with employees, one can always expect to learn about available PTO, health insurance plans, volunteer opportunities – but one overlooked benefit is employee training. HR professionals at organizations experiencing high employee turnover may feel discouraged when it comes to marketing open job roles and attracting new talent. A major factor in why employees are making the decision to leave boils down to limited career growth.
According to Gallup’s report: How Millennials Want to Work and Live, only 29% of millennials are engaged at work, meaning that majority of workers in this age group do not feel emotionally or behaviorally connected to their job and company. Current prospects know to look beyond companies’ job descriptions to get a better feel for company culture, but now it’s more important than ever for companies to showcase its training programs on their website, social channels, and through its employees.
Here are four tips on how HR and L&D professionals can better market training and development as a benefit to attract prospects in the new year:
Share success stories whenever necessary. Employee success stories are a great way to attract new talent. Providing a video, short interview, or blog post is an effective way to communicate to prospective talent that the company invests in its employees’ growth. Your company’s career page is an ideal spot for visitors to get a feel for how the company prioritizes the interests and development of each individual. An example of this could be incorporating a visual of someone’s personal journey at the company, moving from one role to the next.
Encourage employees to be active on social media about your organization’s training offerings. Before the pandemic, companies would often send their top employees to act as brand advocates at tabling events and conferences. Although this strategy is taking a new form as the future of work is changing, you can now reach so many more people by attending virtual conferences or hosting webinars and sharing that on social media as a new way of networking. Whether your employees learned something new, built upon a skill, or applied something they learned from a video lesson, sharing these stories can go a long way and have a significant impact.
Communicate training offerings in job descriptions. This may be an easy one, but potential employees aren’t going to know that your company invests in its employees if no one tells them. Considering how employees are making substantial changes in their career and feel confident advocating for themselves, it’s more critical than ever to show future employees you are serious about their growth as it benefits the company at large.
Release information about new course offerings employees are taking. As a part of your communication strategy in attracting new employees, sprinkle in announcements on new video courses and lessons that are available in your training library. Include mentions of content from industry-known subject matter experts, implemented employee requests, and new topics relating to national awareness every month or social movements occurring in the world today. Educating the public on how your organization is improving its workforce will communicate that your company is progressive and cares about its employees’ growth. BizLibrary is active on social media and continually provides updates on its skills development platform, BizSkills, which helps organizations map content to skills to job roles to further grow and retain its workforce.
It’s important to stay relevant on trends happening in the workplace today to know how to better market your training program to future employees. The key to a successful employee benefits package is personalization. View our webinar, What Makes a Great Employee Benefits Package? (A Fireside Chat), to learn how to curate a personalized plan with both traditional and nontraditional benefits.
If you’re just getting started, one wonderful way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy is to test these methods on your own work staff. Read our blog, “A Complete Guide to Marketing Your Training Program” to further learn how you can market your training program within your organization and leverage employee feedback to strengthen your external marketing efforts.
Ready to get started? Talk to an expert to better showcase your organization’s company culture today!
