The truth is that your employees are your most underutilized resource.
Look at your organization’s budget right now. Where is the money going? Equipment. Overhead. Software. Materials. The things you can see and touch and depreciate on a balance sheet.
What’s often missing – or severely underfunded – is the one investment with the clearest link to productivity, retention, and long-term profitability: your people.
Where Is Your Budget Actually Going?
Most organizations chase efficiency through process improvement and technology upgrades. Both matter. But neither one works the way it should without engaged, capable employees running them. The uncomfortable truth is that employees are the most underutilized resource in most organizations – not because they lack potential, but because nobody invested in developing it.
Training and development gets treated as a line item to cut when budgets get tight. The companies that treat it as an investment – something expected to generate a return – consistently outperform the ones that don’t.
The Real Cost of Skipping Employee Development
Here’s the number that should get every manager’s attention:
According to the Work Institute’s Retention Report, 78% of the reasons employees quit were preventable by the employer, with the single largest category being lack of career development and training.
Not compensation. Not workload. Not their manager — though that matters too. The top preventable reason people leave is that nobody invested in their growth.
Replacing an employee costs! Depending on the role anywhere from 50% to 200% of their annual salary when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and team disruption. Investing in the people you already have is almost always cheaper than replacing them.
What Companies Who Get This Right Do Differently
The organizations that see real ROI from employee development share a few common practices:
They tie development directly to strategy. Training isn’t an event they schedule when things are slow. It’s a deliberate investment linked to where the organization is going. Every development opportunity connects back to a business goal which means employees understand why they’re in the room, not just what they’re learning.
They communicate the why to the employee. Before someone participates in any training or development, the best managers explain why that person was chosen, what’s expected of them afterward, and how it connects to their role and future in the organization. When employees understand the investment being made in them, they take it more seriously.
They follow up. This is where most development initiatives fall apart. A training event without accountability follow-up is just a nice day away from the desk. The organizations that get results build in checkpoints regular conversations about whether the new skills are being applied, what’s working, what needs reinforcement.
Three Things to Do Before You Invest in Your Team
Before you sign anyone up for anything, work through these:
1. Align development to your strategic plan and departmental goals. Development is most effective when it adds momentum to the direction the organization is already moving. Random training – even good training – doesn’t produce results if it’s disconnected from what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
2. Establish clear outcomes. What should the employee be able to do differently after this development? What will change about how they work? Define it before it starts so you have something to measure afterward.
3. Build in accountability. Decide in advance how you’ll follow up. Schedule a 30-day check-in. Make applying the new skill part of their regular one-on-ones. Create a reason for the learning to stick.
The Bottom Line: Keep the Good People You Have
Employees want to be invested in. Ask them – they’ll tell you. They want to feel valued, have work that challenges and engages them, and know that someone is paying attention to where they’re headed.
The organizations that provide that don’t just retain their best people – they attract more of them.
Your employees are not a cost to manage. They are an asset to develop. The return on that investment shows up in retention, morale, productivity, and your bottom line.
Treat them accordingly.
Thinking about investing in your managers or supervisory team? That’s often the highest-leverage development decision an organization can make. Let’s talk about what that could look like for your team.
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Mitzi Taylor is a leadership development consultant and executive coach with 23 years of experience helping organizations build stronger managers and more engaged teams. She is the owner of Not So Basic Training, based in Muskegon, Michigan, specializing in DiSC assessments, manager training, and supervisory skills development.