Offering Training Where It Is Valued Most: How Training Programs for Low-Level Employees Can Increase Your Firm's Productivity and Profits

By: Jody Heymann

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Synopsis: Companies can reap tremendous benefits by offering training to their employees, most directly by improving their workers' job-related skills and productivity. But worldwide, these opportunities are overwhelmingly offered to those who already have an advantage. By implementing successful training programs in your company for your low-level employees-like ESL or literacy training, technical skill building, internal advancement training, or even external education classes-you can increase your company's productivity, minimize turnover, improve work ethic, ease a transition to mechanization, and even recruit from communities formerly unable to join your labor force. In this chapter, the authors share real-world success stories and a decade and a half of research collected from nine countries that will help you tailor a training program to fit your company. You will learn what kind of training will bring the greatest benefits to your firm and your employees, how to structure training in a way that encourages the targeted employees to complete it successfully, and how to secure buy-in from all levels of management. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 5 of "Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce."