Why is employee education important?

Technology continues to advance by leaps and bounds and requires people to master a range of new skills just to keep doing their current job, and there is a real competition among companies for the best quality workforce that already has the necessary training and experience. 

The departure from the traditional order is also manifested through the double income of the average family, which in the past relied on the financial inflow of one person, most often patriarchally oriented, and for the workers of the new era, this means more opportunities to change jobs. 

A dynamic marketplace with an ever-increasing pace of change has caused employers to consider pension and health insurance costs along with other costs associated with long-term employee retention. All of this ultimately led to the fact that employees do not perceive their work environment as "part of the family", which is generally reflected in less loyalty to their employers.

However, the biggest changes occurred with the entry of new generations into the labor market, and their characteristics are less resistance to changes, a tendency to acquire new and improve existing skills. 

Goal-oriented and aware of the environment in which they operate, the new generations want to rise in business as quickly as possible and at the same time upgrade their competencies in order to make their competitiveness tangible.

Most employees today accept the concept of lifelong learning, and perceive educational opportunities and additional training as a key factor in obtaining financial benefits.

The provision of educational opportunities and additional training is not only a privilege for employees - this type of investment in the workforce creates benefits for the employers themselves on several levels. Employees, for example, feel that the company cares about them and their future, inspiring greater loyalty and general motivation. 

Employees are also more satisfied with their work thanks to better mastery of tasks, which makes them more productive and reduces psychological absenteeism. In this spirit, it is more likely that employees will praise the company to friends, family, and even acquaintances, which leads to an improvement of the company's reputation in the general public. 

Individuals satisfied with their jobs and those who feel valued by their employer are also less likely to consider and actively pursue measures to seek further employment. Since the replacement of experienced employees can cost the company a large amount of money, retaining quality individuals and their training is a completely logical and justified plan that will undoubtedly return the investment made.

Research continuously shows that the majority of Croatian employers believe that the communication, presentation and sales skills of their employees are mostly insufficient for success in performing business tasks. 

They believe that only rare "gifted" individuals can boast of their above-average communication efficiency. Employees, on the other hand, in a significantly smaller number believe that they need interpersonal skills training and will generally not be ready to invest time and other resources in similar trainings on their own initiative, but will access them mainly if they are offered and organized by their superiors.

Bad information transfer, conflicts and "difficult" emotions, creativity blocks, hesitation and defeatism, "difficult" colleagues and "difficult" clients, lack of presentation skills are potentially dangerous "eaters" of working time. 

These situations make it impossible to complete even very simple work tasks. If we take into account the fact that business projects in which large financial resources are often invested are almost entirely based on the efficient functioning of the team, it is impossible to bypass interpersonal moments as factors of success. 

Creative conflict resolution, acceptance of mutual differences, building team rules and trust, and encouraging the general level of employee satisfaction and engagement are topics that must be addressed by project managers and their superiors, as well as everyone else involved in such work. 

The question that managers very often ask is "What if I invest money in employee training, and they leave the company?" The answer is: "What if you don't invest money in training your employees, and they stay in the company?"

Educational training should definitely be based on proven theoretical models and publications of contemporary scientific psychology, successful cases from practice and current business trends. But before we start with employee education itself, it is desirable to determine the educational needs of the existing workforce, and at that stage the SMART approach is often used when setting business goals. 

For example, the SMART method can help define specific, measurable, attainable and relevant goals that a person tries to achieve in a certain period of time.

The advantage of a proactive approach in planning education is obvious: recognition of the real needs of the client in