Horowitz shares some insightful math about training. If your employees are 1% more effective, they will save approximately 20 hours per year (50 weeks x 40 hours per week = 2,000 hours in a typical employee work-year).
How much of your time should you spend making your employee 1% more effective? If it takes less than 20 hours, then your ROI is going to be positive in year 1.
Chances are, you can build and execute training for 10 people in about 6 hours. Call it 3 hours of prep and 3 hours of training. That’s 6 hours of your time and 30 hours of their time. 36 hours invested.
If that training improves the effectiveness of each employee by 1%, the resulting savings is 10 x 20 = 200 hours. That’s more than a 5x return on your 36 hour investment.
Training employees is one of the best things you can do as a manager. The company benefits, your relationship with the employee benefits, and the return on investment can be multiple times the investment.