Every employee can benefit from a good employee development program, whether your staff are salaried or hourly. Yet it’s easily forgotten or let slide in the pressure of everyday business, and some days you might feel like it’s hard enough to get through the day, let alone manage and create a continued and future plan for employee development. We know that you’re not Mark Zuckerberg and that investing millions is impossible, but as a business owner, you can’t afford to cut employee development from your budget. So, why should you press on and try to make it happen in your business? Here are five reasons:

It helps attract and keep the right employees

Keeping employees is a huge challenge (and expense) for employers, and so is the hiring process, but having a solid employee development program can help make that less of a burden. When it comes to attracting and hiring the best employees, a solid development program will help build loyalty, attract the right new employees and increase your reputation.

You create promotable employees

Hiring managers and other upper-level employees from within is a good idea. Who else is more familiar with your day-to-day business, and with your customers? But not every long-time employee is ready for such positions, and promoting them when they aren’t leads to problems. A proper employee development program will create a pool of capable workers who are ready for promotion and help you identify strengths and weaknesses in your team.

It keeps employees engaged

Bored employees are a recipe for disaster as they easily take on negative attitudes, sloppy work habits, and cause damage to relationships with other employees and customers. Employee development is a way that you can keep your employees engaged to prevent that kind of boredom from setting in. No matter what industry you are in, interesting training programs, from injection molding training to social media strategies, future development events that are fun or challenging to look forward to remove the plodding daily feel to a job that leads to that dreaded boredom and resentment.

It helps you save and earn

A good employee is like money in the bank. That well-trained, confident, and engaged employee you’ve invested so much time and money in? They are going to do better work for you in the long run. That’s going to help save you money, as employees become more efficient and proficient. Employee development also has the potential to increase sales and output. Either way, that’s good for your bottom line, and that’s exactly why employee development should be seen not as an expense, but as an investment.

It forces you to look ahead

Employee wellbeing forces you to think ahead because development programs don’t happen without planning. The training that worked last year might not work next year, or your business culture might be shifting according to customer and industry needs. You might need to attract a different kind of employee, and your development offerings need to shift to reflect that.