Poorly designed curriculum led to high employee turnover

The Issue: 

One employer that I worked for was heavily focused on providing training for one specific set of employees (clinicians) because they were mandated to do so by law. The rest of the employees go very little in the way of training. There was also virtually nothing in the way of supervisor training for newly-promoted supervisors. Of the clinical training that was available, much of it was not initially assigned well and many employees had to take courses that were not relevant to their work. In the end, the employee turnover rate for the company was 5% per month.

The Solution: 

I launched an “Academy” training program. I started by reworking the clinical courses so that the information being presented was targeted to a specific audience and deployed the new courses. Next I built out basic training courses for other aspects of the business; HR, Finance, Maintenance, etc.

I also built a special “Supervisor Track” that consisted of 1 full-day of classes and 2 half-days of classes. Topics included soft-skills such as communication strategies, conflict resolution, interviewing skills, advanced HR concepts, goal setting, and more. Day 2 was filled with regulatory training; FMLA, ADA, Risk Assessment, Workplace Injury and reporting, etc. Day 3 was filled with company-specific policies; PTO, Petty Cash, performance improvement, etc.

In tandem with the Supervisor Track, I also built out a Leadership Development Track which was aimed at regular employees who wanted to move up into management positions. The classes were similar to those in the Supervisor track, but focused instead on a “Team-Leader” capacity rather than a manager capacity.

The Result: 

The training programs were universally liked throughout the company. Employee satisfaction went up and turnover dropped to 1.6% per month. Based on the length of New Hire training (10 days), average salaries, and onboarding costs, this saved the company $512,640 per year in onboarding costs.