Cost-effective ways to upskill and reskill employees

Spend a little, save a lot: 6 cost-effective ways to train your workforce

June 29, 2021 5:30 AM

Companies are dragging their feet on reskilling and upskilling their workforce because the cost is too high. But if they don’t, the potential loss is far greater.

A recent survey by global learning tech company, Epignosis, found that 53% of Americans say they would switch to a role in an entirely new industry if they had the opportunity to retrain and upskill. Still, 30% of employers said they don't have a specific budget for upskilling or reskilling training, according to a Prudential study.

It’s clear that employers are not easily convinced to allocate a budget for building new skills, despite the potential to attract top talent, according to Thanos Papangelis, co-founder and CEO of Epignosis. And even when they do, they don’t give their programs enough money.

“Measuring the effect of upskilling training may seem challenging and some companies are not inclined to invest in anything they can’t precisely measure,” Papangelis says.

The cost of reskilling — which includes funding learning design, training materials and subject matter expertise — is approximately $24,800 per person in the United States, according to a 2019 paper from the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group. This start-up cost, along with the time it would take to implement these programs, is the leading factor behind the lack of training.

But their hesitation is costing them regardless: high turnover and new hires cost the average 100-person company approximately $660,000 to $2.6 million per year, according to a study conducted by Gallup.

“Many companies don’t realize but cutting employee training costs can be financially detrimental and yield much higher costs in the long run,” Papangelis says. “Employees value learning opportunities, but when they are not provided as an opportunity to optimize their skills and abilities they’re more likely to leave.”

For employers that are still unsure about where and how to spend their money, training their employee base doesn’t necessarily have to be a costly venture, Papangelis says. There are cost-effective — and equally thorough — implementations that will achieve the same result.

Define clear training objectives

Setting training objectives may be the most significant, yet most overlooked way to cut down cost of training initiatives, according to Papangelis. Clearly defined goals — figuring out which specific skills, skillsets or attitudes are to be nurtured with training beforehand — will help to avoid spending on unnecessary content, courses, media formats and external resources that are not aligned with the objective.

Choose the right training platform

Even though it may seem like a significant investment to start with, a proper training platform — or Learning Management System — will help with controlling and cutting down cost in the long run, Papangelis says. A good LMS isn’t just for learners to access the content, but it also offers assessment and reporting tools to monitor course completion and performance. Different vendors offer different pricing schemes, and a good practice is opting-in for a platform that offers a free version, such as TalentLMS, that will allow testing with no time restrictions. This way, there’s no commitment to a costly pricing package before even knowing if the tool is a good fit and a chosen platform ensures learners' adoption.

Decide upfront on media formats in training materials

Costs can go up and down depending on the type and quantity of media used in courses. That’s why a decision about how media-rich training needs to be should be made early on, Papangelis says. Imagery is important for engaging learners. But does every course need video or interactive infographics? While these can be fun for learners, are they important to the particular project? For example, clickable, interactive infographics are captivating and engaging. But that could skyrocket training development costs — when the same learning outcomes could be achieved with a simple screencast.

Encourage peer learning

Reduce training costs by relying on internal experts instead of turning to external instructors, Papangelis says. Inside your teams, there are already people with a lot of experience in their field or people with unique talents. Also, these types of trainings motivate the more experienced employees by allowing them to share their knowledge with others and, in return, show appreciation to your employees and enhance team communication.

Offer ready-made courses

Creating learning programs from scratch takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you need to hire experts to create the content. Keeping training costs low can be done by giving employees access to a library of ready-made online courses for them to participate in. For instance, TalentLibrary covers a vast range of soft skills your employees need for success at work. This way, you won’t have to worry about the quality of your content, running out of content ideas, or paying for each course separately.

Measure the outcome

Along with training objectives, set up metrics beforehand. Tracking them will show whether the investment has been a success, and if there are modules or formats that were unnecessary or not well executed. Some metric examples are: course completion rate, overall rating of the training program, post-training survey, and how well the learners performed on tests. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound is what you should aim for.