Business owners often tell me that one of their biggest fears is that they will take good, young, inexperienced staff members and train them and give them skills and experience, and then they will leave the organisation and chase the bigger bucks offered elsewhere.

I tell them that I have the opposite fear. I worry that we will employ good, young, inexperienced people and not train them and they will stay! Then I end up with a bunch of unskilled staff.

For my organisation to be the best it can be, I need to train my employees. There is always the associated risk that my employees will be so good that other companies will want to poach them. When the attempts are made—and they are—I see it as a compliment. It puts pressure on our organisation to ensure we have created a workplace that is such a great environment that it makes our employees unpoachable.

In general terms, people want to be good at their job. Managers want people to do their job well, and the better an employee is at his or her job, the more valuable that employee is to the organisation. Develop your employees, and they will bring many benefits to your organisation.

Globally, 73 percent of employers believe that training is the single best way to boost employee retention. Can you see the delicious irony here? Some employers don’t train their employees because they are scared of their trained personnel leaving them. If they trained them, they would be less likely to leave!

If you still aren’t convinced, take a look at these numbers. Employee turnover is expected to cost Australian businesses more than $100 billion this year. In the last year, 1.4 million people changed jobs in Australia. Over the last 50 years, the average length of employment per job has decreased 67 percent. Surveys show that organisations that make large investments in training have lower employee turnover, which is associated with higher customer satisfaction, which is a direct driver of profitability. I rest my case!

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