Management Training Programs: 5 Ways They Benefit Employees

by Mike O'Neill

Your employees want to learn. They want to get better at their jobs and perform at a higher level.

In 2019, LinkedIn conducted a study. 94% of employees responded that they would stay with their employer for longer if the company would be willing to invest in training.

Management training helps everyone — not just the managers themselves. Managers learn skills that enable them to build training programs that keep your employees engaged and happy.

When employees feel secure about their role within your organization, they are more engaged. Engaged employees are more productive — which boosts your profit margins and reduces employee turnover, among other benefits.

Customized management training programs teach managers how to create a work environment that promotes learning and ensures employees feel respected and valued by their employers.

If you want to see real results from your management training program, you need to make sure that your managers are applying what they learn on the job to help your employees.

Just going through leadership training is not going to benefit anyone. Ensuring participants are using and applying the tools will make a difference. I recently conducted a management training course for a client. The training occurred once per week for 10 weeks, and participants had assignments to complete in between the sessions.

The assignments included interaction with employees, bosses, etc., using the tools and methods they learned in training. One manager’s employees commented on the difference they saw in their manager and the way he was communicating with them. He started talking to them more, asking for their opinions and getting them more involved in decisions regarding their job.

The employees were happier and felt more valued because of the changes their managers had made in the way they were communicating with them.

Rhonda Beard

Rhonda’s client isn’t the only company that can benefit from a customized management training program. Keep reading to learn the 5 ways that developing and implementing a customized management training program will help your company.

Don’t have time to read this article right now? Click here to be taken to the summary at the bottom of this page.

1. Increase Employee Job Satisfaction

Employees are quitting their jobs at faster rates than we’ve ever seen before, and dissatisfaction with their job is one of the biggest reasons they left.

In August 2019, a record-breaking 4,478,000 U.S. workers quit their jobs, and that trend is expected to continue throughout 2020.

The best way for an employee to get ahead is to actually quit their job and go to another company for compensation reasons. Companies are willing to pay about 15% more for new employees, but they’re only willing to give their current employees about a 2-3% annual raise.

Brian Kropp, Vice President of Gartner

Financial compensation isn’t the only way your company can improve employee satisfaction, but it’s often the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s what employees complain about the most. Investing in customized training for managers and employees increases retention without the need to offer significant raises.

Employees reporting to trained managers enjoy their jobs more because their managers communicate with them better, they have a better work environment, they’re clear on what's expected of them, and they receive routine constructive feedback.

Instead of focusing on increasing salary, emphasize continued learning, and promote leadership development at all levels throughout your organization—employees whose employers invest in their continued education report higher job satisfaction.

Management training stresses the importance of being in-tune with the employees they manage. As a result, employees feel more valued and have a better understanding of the company’s mission & goals, and employees can better identify with their employer. Employees reap the benefits when their managers are better at managing them because they've received customized training.

Mike O'Neill, Bench Builders

Implementation of a customized management training program teaches your managers how to interface with their employees effectively and increases employee job satisfaction, which in turn increases employee retention.

Recommended Reading: Organizational Leadership: 5 Essentials That You Should Know

2. Reduce Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars every year — or more if your turnover rates are higher than average.

Turnover costs are much higher than most people realize. For example, in 2019, it costs $20,134 to replace an hourly manufacturing employee.


Management training emphasizes the importance of identifying talent from within the ranks. This will open up promotion opportunities for employees as their supervisor is promoted.

Management training typically quantifies the high cost of turnover. This understanding often signals to the manager the value of employee retention and their critical role in retention.

Mike O'Neill, Bench Builders

With the cost of turnover being so high, you can hardly afford not to implement a customized management training program. As mentioned above, management training increases employee job satisfaction, which reduces turnover.

Another way management training reduces turnover is by allowing employees more opportunities to develop their skills and be promoted to other positions within your company. It is more cost-effective to promote from within than it is to hire someone new from outside your organization.

Contact us today, and we’ll teach you how to reduce employee turnover and calculate ROI on your management training program. We can even help you customize and implement a training program, so you don’t have to do it alone.

Recommended Reading: 7 Causes of High Turnover and How Much It’s Costing You

3. Boost Productivity & Engagement

As we learned at the beginning of this article, employees who have the opportunity to develop their skills are happier and more engaged with the company, are less likely to quit, and they are much more productive.

Despite glaring evidence that ongoing employee training is crucial to improving retention, and that 83% of businesses say it’s critical to develop leaders at all levels, a shocking 63% of millennials report that their leadership skills are not being fully developed.

Part of that percentage consists of employees who work for companies that are investing in “off-the-shelf” or “one-size-fits-all” training programs. Investing in those types of programs might help, but it’s unlikely that you will see much improvement from them.

You need to take the time to create a training program that is customized to meet the unique needs of each manager. Managers need to be instrumental in the development of training programs for their employees because they can provide useful input about each individual’s strengths and weaknesses.

We can help you boost productivity and increase engagement among employees by crafting the perfect management training program for your team. Contact us now, and we’ll work with you to make sure your entire staff receives the training they crave as well as the training your company needs them to have.

Recommended Reading: 11 Leadership Activities That Will Boost Team Productivity

4. Improve the Quality of Work Produced

Managers and employees who receive routine training produce higher quality work and are more satisfied with the job they perform for your company.

One of the best things you can do when you develop a customized management training program is to teach your managers how to give employees constructive and honest feedback, providing them with instruction and guidance.

I recently worked with a client who had a manager that was not motivating his employees, not making decisions quickly, or making progress or improvements in his area.

The employee was a hard worker and very bright, but he was just not getting results. The manager was not involved in developing or coaching to any great degree. He kept telling the employees what he needed, but he provided very little feedback or encouragement.

I worked with the manager and trained him on how to change his approach — and it made a big difference. He began communicating more clearly. He explained what he wanted in smaller steps while clearly defining goals, expectations, and deadlines.

He also talked with his employees to find out what was holding him back. He became more encouraging and provided regular feedback as he made progress.

The employee began to step up and become more confident in making changes and moving things forward that had been incomplete for quite some time.

Rhonda Beard, Bench Builders

Don’t just have your managers tell employees what they’re doing wrong without giving them an action plan to make improvements. “Sink or swim” styles of management will only confuse your employees and lead them to produce low quality work because your managers aren't clear on what they expect from them and how they can improve.

Recommended Reading: 5 Changes to Improve Your Leadership Training Programs

5. Ensure Conflicts Are Handled More Effectively

Conflict resolution should be a significant component of your customized management training programs. Managers frequently have to mediate conflicts between employees, and they need to receive proper training so they can learn the most effective ways to do so.

Management training teaches them how to be more self-aware and quickly identify potential triggers that cause conflicts to arise. They’ll learn why they react to certain situations the way they do, and you can teach them techniques to help them work past triggers and negative reactions.

Conflict resolution workshops allow managers to practice handling difficult situations in a variety of ways so they can learn what strategies work best for each situation.

We recommend hiring a professional coach to lead your workshop vs. trying to host one yourself.

Recommended Reading: Leadership Workshops: The Last Guide That You Will Ever Need

Quick Summary

Managers are the role models and cheerleaders for the employees who work under them, and management training gives them the tools and resources they need to improve their skills and performance as well as the skills and performance of their team.

Customized management training programs are crucial to the continued growth and success of your business. The more emphasis you place on teaching leadership skills to your managers, the happier both your managers and employees will be in their jobs.

Implementing a customized management training program will help your organization:

  1. Increase Employee Job Satisfaction: managers who go through training learn to communicate more effectively, participate in active listening, and provide constructive feedback, which increases employee job satisfaction.
  2. Reduce Employee Turnover: turnover can cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Management training programs help reduce turnover and save you a lot of money in the long run.
  3. Boost Productivity & Engagement: the more satisfied employees are with their jobs, the more productive and engaged they will be.
  4. Increase the Quality of Work Produced: employees who are secure in their positions within your company and enjoy their jobs produce higher quality work.
  5. Ensure Conflicts Are Handled Effectively: the soft skills managers learn in training help them resolve conflicts effectively and ensures that employees feel like their voice is being heard.

Learn to Develop More Effective Leaders


It’s easy to think that management training only impacts managers, and you might not have realized the impact it has on the employees before reading this article.

You need a customized management training program that takes into account the individual needs of each employee and aligns them with the goals of your organization. Our expert consultants have been helping companies develop and implement customized management training programs for decades, and we are confident we can help you too.

That’s why we created our free guide to help you learn what leadership skills and topics you should be teaching in training. In our guide, we show you the importance of effective daily habits, how to maximize workforce productivity, ways to overcome team dysfunctions, conflict resolution tactics, and much more.

Download your free copy of our guide by clicking the following link: A Tactical Field Guide to Managing Humans.

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