How we work in America continues to shift since the lockdown days of 2020. Hybrid and remote work remain attractive alternatives to spending 40+ hours a week at the office despite a recent call by many companies for employees to return five days a week. Whatever the return-to-work policy is, the show must go on. Or rather, companies must continue to operate efficiently to generate results. Developing your internal teams is a way forward. Organizations that invest in professional development enjoy better employee retention and a positive work culture while encouraging promotability. 

One popular professional development path is executive coaching, where a facilitator works to improve leadership and management performance by developing an individual's self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and capacity to persuade others. Let’s look at the ROI of executive coaching and professional development.

Importance of Professional Development

The most popular reason employees leave their jobs is because they feel underappreciated. 1:1 coaching provides custom guidance tailored to a team member’s specific needs, which addresses an employee’s issues and needs. When employees receive feedback and training relevant to their unique circumstances, they feel more valued. That’s where workshops, 1:1 coaching, and custom programs come into play. Staff should continually assess their skillset, build relationships within the organization, and develop an ongoing strategy and improve team development.

Workshops and custom programs not only promote long-term growth but may also influence innovation. Companies can’t get stuck in the cycle of always doing things the same way. Employees represent the greatest possible resource for encouraging innovation. Armed with different interests, skills, and perspectives, staff can initiate process improvements and organizational innovations. Professional development workshops led by an executive coach can be the catalyst to encourage innovation.

Encouraging employees to dive deeper into their personal learning journeys will help to increase their overall productivity and produce innovative ideas, promoting organizational grow.

Employee Retention

One could argue that the most successful companies are the ones with a stable workforce. However, maintaining employees can be difficult. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace survey, 51% of employed workers are actively or passively looking for jobs. Another surveys states it costs between one-half and twice an employee’s annual salary to replace them.

Aside from the financial benefits of a long-term workforce, a high churn rate also promotes psychological consequences. High employee turnover lowers morale and makes employees feel insecure. It can also negatively impact productivity since your remaining employees may become overwhelmed by taking on additional work.

Indeed employs this formula to calculate the cost of employee turnover: 

(Hiring + onboarding + training) x (number of employees x annual turnover percentage) + lost productivity = annual cost of turnover

Below is an example using data from a diner that employs fifty people:

Hiring costs: $3,281 per year

Onboarding costs: $1,315 per year

Training costs: $1,829 per year

The management team analyzed profits from a period with no turnover and a period with high turnover and then compared the difference. They found they lost an average of $10,294 per year due to lost productivity. The diner has a turnover rate of two people a quarter, for an annual percentage of 16%.

Using the cost of turnover formula, the calculation becomes:

($3,281 + $1,315 + $1,829) x (50 x 0.16) + $10,294 = $61,694

The annual turnover cost at the diner is $61,694 a year. If the establishment can retain just one more employee each year, however, it brings the business’s overall turnover cost down to $55,269. When applied to other organizations, these numbers are eye opening. Professional development programs help solve the employee retention problem by providing ongoing support, customized learning plans, and consistent feedback.

Workplace Culture

“People have thought about culture as this separate thing, but it really is integral to the business. It’s something that needs to be cocreated from the top down and the bottom up, and it needs to be reviewed consistently.” -- Melissa Daimler, chief learning officer of Udemy on the difficulty of defining workplace culture in a McKinsey & Company interview. 

A toxic team or workplace is the result of a myriad of issues including poor communication, a hyperfocus on profit, micromanagement, or bullying. If not addressed, a lack of trust, gossiping, below average employee engagement, and higher absenteeism rates can be pervasive and disruptive. 

Determining the issues that contribute to a toxic culture is the first step to improving it. Leaders will dilute their efforts by trying to improve every aspect of corporate culture that employees find irritating. Instead, executives should focus on addressing the core pain point issues that lead employees to disengage, bad-mouth the organization, and quit.

Unrest in a work environment can escalate quickly, so it is imperative to act. How can executive coaching improve workplace culture? MIT Sloan Management Review identified the toxic five found in workplace culture today: disrespect, non-inclusiveness, no ethics, cutthroat dynamics, and bullying. Professional development workshops and 1:1 coaching can quickly determine the core issues and begin to solve the problems with robust action plans and tailored support.

Encouraging Promotability

Promotability is an essential building block in a career. It means an employee can fast track her career by possessing the necessary skills to quickly move up the corporate ladder. In post-Covid times, securing a promotion can be a challenge. With so many qualified candidates vying for positions, understanding the attributes that make an individual promotable is key.

We found these statistics that illustrate employees want to gain new skills to encourage promotability:

• Seventy-four percent of workers report that a lack of professional development opportunities prevents them from reaching their full potential.
• Ninety-one percent of employees want personalized, relevant training to promote team development.
• Investing in professional development led to a 24% uptick in productivity.
• Often promotability goes beyond technical skills and experience. Soft skills also play a significant role. Surya Partners offers professional development workshops and 1:1 coaching on promotability that shapes a professional’s path toward career advancement.

Next Step

Richard Branson once said, “Clients don't come first - employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients." To truly nurture engagement and encourage participation in team development initiatives, it takes more than just presenting employees with training courses. As professional development and employee training statistics show, companies need a more intentional, strategic approach.

Are you ready to uplift your team’s performance? Contact Surya Partners to create custom professional development programs for your staff. Surya Partners provides tangible outcomes. Beyond theoretical frameworks, we emphasize strategies and actions that you can implement immediately for visible improvements. Your organization will see a return on the coaching investment with a happier workforce that is more committed to corporate goals.