Educational Imperative: The Long-Term Link Between Training and Employee Retention

Whether a new employee or a long-term staff member, training is an integral part of employee retention. Over 90% of workers say that workplace training positively impacts their job engagement. That’s especially true in the construction space.

Continuous education is crucial for architects, engineers, and construction professionals because tools, techniques, and project partnerships change on every project. Continuing education helps professionals stay current on the latest technologies, evolving processes, and the necessary skills needed to do their jobs effectively. But it’s more than that. Continuing education is essential to building a positive work culture, job satisfaction and employee connections.

Three Ways to Build Your Continuing Education Program

Early and Often:

The first 90 days of an employee’s tenure often dictate whether that individual stays with your company long-term. Yet, too often onboarding programs stay largely focused on paperwork and brief job instructions, rather than technical and social development. These programs should encompass formal learning through on-demand courses and live sessions, as well as on-the-job learning and social/peer mentorship. A key part of a training program should be regular follow-ups with new employees to make sure all is going well, answer questions/concerns or evaluate new training opportunities. Providing robust onboarding, training, and support during the first three months helps new hires feel welcomed, prepared for their roles, and invested in the company’s success—and therefore more likely to form lasting careers within the firm.

Cross-Division Involvement:  

Involving departments across a company in building a training program. According to a 2024 Workplace Learning report, 89% of learning and development professionals say that proactively building employee skills will help navigate the evolving future of work.

Training programs are a great way to identify mentors who can help orient new employees to customized work processes and the company culture. Departments might consider including human resources, IT, security, and payroll, for example. As well, rotating employees through different groups has proven beneficial. For example, an architectural firm may have different departments for multi-family, retail, and commercial design. Cross-functional development can provide a wide perspective and skill set for new employees and allow them to find the best fit.

The Social Side:

An effective continuing education model balances formal knowledge training with experiential learning and social connections to help new employees feel supported and stay engaged in their roles long-term. There is a tendency in many firms to focus mostly on technical skills rather than well-rounded competencies like collaboration, problem-solving, communication, etc. In today’s environment, it’s pretty easy to find somebody that knows Revit; it’s a little bit harder to find somebody that knows Revit and is also a team player, a problem solver, and communicator. Training programs should develop well-rounded competencies.

Empowered for Excellence

One of the common hurdles of an effective continuing education program is underestimating the amount of planning, resources, and budget to create effective long-term training programs

A simple way to get started is to use the professionals you already have on hand. Likely there are people in your organization who are already training and mentoring—use them to build the foundation of your program.

Also, keep in mind that training programs don’t have to be sophisticated, but they do require continuous investment in time and resources. According to Capterra, organizations generally spend anywhere from 1-5% of their salary budget on training annually. If this is the first time you’ll be calculating a training budget, there are resources such as Cognota that offer sound benchmarks.

Finally, keep in mind that it’s important to embed training and development into your company culture as a way to empower employees, boost retention, and drive overall job satisfaction—which results in better products and services.

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