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Does Training Increase Staff Retention in Recruitment Agencies?

It has been said for a very long time that if you train/invest in your people then you increase staff retention. But is it really true? Well in this article we are going to explore does training actually increase staff retention.

Lets start with some facts from someone other than us, because after all, we could be biased.

In 2018 our friends at LinkedIn released the 2018 Workplace Learning & Development Report – a very impressive document created by the LI team where they surveyed around 4,000 people to find what is actually happening in the market when it comes to training impacting staff retention. What I really like about this study is that out of the 4000, over 50% of those surveyed were employees.

Although there is tonne of absolute gold in this document there is one point that we would like to share in this post. The following image is a screenshot that comes straight from the LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning & Development Report

94% of the employees surveyed would stay at a company longer if the company invested in them.

WHAT!!!! No way, it couldn’t be that easy to increase staff retention – could it?

Ok lets keep exploring this for a little bit more

In a magnificent article titled “Developing Your Employees Is The Key To Retention — Here Are 4 Smart Ways To Start” published by Forbes.com, Talent Management & Brand Strategist Megan M. Biro also points out another piece of gold in the LinkedIn report being that

Fifty-six percent of employees would take a manager-suggested course, but getting managers involved in employee learning is a major challenge. It’s not that managers don’t want employees to learn. It’s that they’re usually already overloaded, and occupied with the daily and more pressing challenges of managing their teams and tackling the to-do list.

Hang on a second, so throughout our travels talking and dealing with Recruitment Agencies all over the country, we hear too often that Managers are busy looking after their staff and trying to find new staff, but according to this, if the Managers invested in their staff, the identification of new people wouldn’t be required, because they would increase their staff retention.

Ok lets explore that a bit further. Why do people leave recruitment agencies? Well there are many reasons why this happens but instead of us giving our view on this hot topic, lets use the information provided by Louise Ogilvy who is the Director at a Rec 2 Rec firm (People Prospect Solutions) in the UK. Louise posted an article on LinkedIn in March 23, 2017 which is extremely relevant to this question. In her article Why Recruiters are Leaving the Industry, Louise says that one of the main reasons Recruiters are leaving the industry is

Recruiters aren’t being trained properly and there is a distinct lack of support overall

this was further enhanced with these comments

A lack of mentoring and coaching and a “sink or swim” mentality in the industry overall &

A distinct lack of personal development and career options

Training, training, training. It’s a costly exercise sourcing a new recruitment member and yet so many times I hear from recruiters that their training was practically non-existent. Investment in staff isn’t a “nice to have” it’s a must have!

With over 17 years experience Louise is a seasoned Rec 2 Rec specialist and is confirming that we need to invest in our people or simply loose them.

Last lets provide some of our own information.

Here are two cases that come straight from Recruitment School on not only how training will increase your staff retention, but also help you attract/secure new talent.

Case Study One

We do all the “recruitment” training for a fairly well known Recruitment Firm in the Australian market. This organisation has implemented the Recruitment Ninja program in its entirety, meaning everyone who comes into their business goes through initial and ongoing training through Recruitment School.

It was reported to us recently that a prospective employee who was “weighing” up [three or four] different Recruitment Agencies, chose our client because of their investment in their people. What!!!! No way, people are now choosing to join companies due to the investment in their people 😱

Case Study Two

A small to mid size firm that utilises Recruitment School for all their training has seen their annualised staff turn over drop from 56% to 35%. I know right, that is a massive result.

The original question was, Does Training Increase Staff Retention in Recruitment Agenciesand I think based on the information provided here, the answer to that question is a resounding YES.

If you would like to increase staff retention then contact us as soon as possible and we can have a confidential chat on what is available for you and your business.


Recruitment School builds brilliant recruiters through a combination of online self-paced and assisted training programs.

If you want to know more about how we can improve the efficiency of your recruitment function then organise a demo of the Recruitment School platform by clicking here

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1 thought on “Does Training Increase Retention in Recruitment Agencies”

  1. I can validate what this article says. I run a large’ish recruitment agency. Our staff turnover was around 60%. We appointed Recruitment School and over the last two years our STO has reduced to 30% – half of what it was and 3 of those who have left have left due to family issues. YES staff turn over is reduced by training you people. Its not that hard.

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