Businesses are only as strong as their employees. In a fast world such as ours, this means that employees now need to improve upon their skills and knowledge every single day if you want your company to remain competitive.
It isn’t economically viable to have a high employee turnover. You will need to pay to train, recruit, and you suffer from a lack of productivity. In fact, it is far more valuable for you to invest your time and money into your current employees so that they improve, remain fiercely loyal to your company, and see your success as their success, and not just a means to a paycheck.
Start Investing In Your Employees
Investing in your employees is wonderful for two reasons. One, because investing in them is great for the company culture. Your employees will see your company as the best place for career advancement. No one will be stuck in a dead-end job here unless they don’t apply themselves.
Then there’s the fact that investing in your employees’ skills and knowledge is how you in turn can benefit directly from their newfound expertise. If you require these employees to put together training seminars for the rest of their team, your whole workforce improves, and every employee feels valued.
When employees feel valued, they want to work for you. Between their loyalty and expertise, you will have a team that will help your company reach new heights.
Top Degrees You Want Working For You
There are a few degrees that benefit every business. Statisticians, for example, can help a company improve their efficiency and their marketing, selling, and supply chain. They help solve real-world problems within your business using the data you have, but previously were wasting.
Benefit of Sponsoring Further Education
Sponsoring an employee is one of the best ways to invest in them, and done right won’t actually cost you in the long run. Essentially it means working out a deal with your employee so that you cover the high upfront costs. Once they earn their MA, they will be naturally placed on a higher income bracket. A portion of this paycheck can then be paid back into your company.
Rather than just keep it, you should put it into a sponsorship fund. This will help all employees work exceptionally hard so that they can apply for it, because furthering their career in such a way is great for their career. If you are worried about them leaving immediately after then put a clause in their contract. Non-competitive agreements can and will encourage your employees to stay with you for at least a few years, so you can enjoy the benefits of a highly qualified employee in your workforce.
So long as you follow up with a great working culture and environment, however, they should have no reason to leave. When and if they do move on, remember to keep close connections with them. They are great networking professionals to know.
How You Can Support an Employee Gaining an MA
Balancing a workload and a course load is difficult, which is why you need to be accommodating to truly help your sponsored employee do their best. Some simple and budget-friendly ways that you can help them include:
Find a Great Online Degree to Sponsor
Online degrees are far superior to night schools, because you can choose industry-relevant degrees from anywhere in the world. They also tend to cost less or offer more flexible payment plans, so if you pay for their entire education or just a fraction of it you have more space to pay.
When finding an online degree, you will want to choose one that is focused less on theory and more on practical application. An online Statistics Masters Program from Michigan Tech provides all your employee will need to master applied statistics in a real world setting.
Be Flexible with Hours
Flexible hours is one of the best ways to be accommodating to the extra course load without causing your employee to be unproductive or tired. If they want to study during lunch, let them work in the morning as normal, then return late to make up the rest of their 8 hour day. You could allow them to work remotely as well, so you get the full day’s workload without overbearing their schedule.
Subscribe to Industry-Relevant Journals
The reason why all employers should subscribe to industry relevant journals is simple; it will help your company stay at the front of innovation. All the newest theories, studies, and news will be available to you. To really benefit, however, you will want to create summaries for everyone.
Either have the sponsored employee create a short newsletter outlining the latest issue, or share the responsibility. Every edition (some come out weekly, some monthly, some quarterly) have an employee go through the findings and create a summary. This summary will then be shared amongst everyone.
This way, your employee who is studying can benefit from great research which will help with their studies, and the rest of your employees can stay up to date with industry-relevant findings.
Get More Out of Your Sponsorship
A great way to get even more out of your sponsorship and to help your employee really reaffirm what they have learned is require them to create seminars on what they have learned every month or so. This will be given to the rest of your employees so that everyone can work better together. Having one statistician is great, but if everyone knows how data can be used the whole workforce will be better off for it.
It’s the same with tech degrees or web developers. If the rest of your employees understood the basics of what other departments do then everyone involved can work more productively together, rather than dealing with friction between departments. It’s also how your employees can value each other more and improves teamwork as a whole.
In short, always try to improve your workforce. Share in knowledge, and build a company culture that values progression.
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