Developing Top Talent at Work: The Top 5 Benefits

Developing Top Talent Matters
Our research on organizational alignment shows that talent accounts for 29% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing companies. Alongside culture and strategy, talent is one of the three pillars of sustained high performance. Creating a purposeful employee development plan is essential for building and retaining the people who can execute your strategy effectively.

Ensuring the right people with the right skills and motivations occupy the right roles at the right time doesn’t happen by chance. It demands a structured learning and development strategy —one that assesses, develops, tracks, and reinforces the capabilities your workforce needs to thrive and drive results.

The Benefits of Developing Top Talent

Our Best Places to Work Employee Engagement Survey reveals a stark reality: up to 40% of employees leave within their first year when they don’t receive meaningful training and development. Can your organization afford that level of turnover?  Investing in talent development delivers measurable advantages. Here are five key benefits of cultivating top talent in the workplace:

1. Better Employee Retention
   Demonstrate that you value your people by investing in their growth and ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to succeed.  Offer meaningful learning and development opportunities that allow employees to grow alongside your business. Collaborate with each individual to create targeted development plans that advance their careers, foster engagement, and encourage long-term commitment.
2. Easier Employee Attraction
   Today’s top talent evaluates potential employers based on their commitment to employee development. Companies that fail to invest in learning and growth risk being seen as stagnant or indifferent to skill advancement.  High performing cultures stand out by offering clear, consistent, and meaningful career development opportunities — making them magnets for ambitious, motivated professionals that fit.
3. Enhanced Compliance
   A well-designed learning and development strategy ensures your organization stays ahead of evolving state and federal regulations, fostering a workplace that is psychologically safe, respectful, and free from discrimination.  It also creates clear documentation that your employees are receiving legally required training — protecting your business from costly legal risks while demonstrating a commitment to ethical and compliant practices.
4. Greater Consistency Across the Organization
   High-performing organizations establish a shared language and a unified approach to how work gets done. They set clear performance standards and ensure information flows seamlessly, creating alignment and reducing gaps across teams.
5. Boosted Employee Performance
   Investing strategically in employee development delivers measurable returns. Well-trained employees not only understand what is expected of them and how to achieve it, but they are also more engaged, motivated, and capable of delivering stronger, more consistent results.

The Bottom Line
Many leaders say they “invest in people,” yet too often leave employees to navigate their own development. For learning initiatives to deliver real results, every investment must be thoughtfully designed, strategically reinforced, and clearly aligned with business goals — ensuring training translates into measurable performance gains.

To learn more about how to develop top talent at work , download The Number 1 Reason Training Initiatives Fail According to Executives

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.