It is a natural progression for individual interests to evolve and change. As the individual's interests change, so must their skills. To retain productive and qualified employees, adequate attention must be given to career planning and professional development. Leading edge firms recognize this, and are making investments in training that far surpass average firms' training investments. And they report the investments in training funnel directly through to the bottom line.
Employees receiving ongoing training are significantly more productive and far less likely to leave.
Add to that the cost of paying overtime to cover the workload while you find a suitable candidate. Compare that to the cost of professional development training for an existing employee. Not only is it far less expensive in actual dollars to train an employee than replace him, there is a far greater return on investment for training dollars than on dollars spent recruiting and hiring a new employee. Given these numbers, a company could double or even triple expenditures on training and still realize tremendous savings when compared to the cost of turnover. Whether providing skill upgrade training to prepare existing employees for promotion, or increasing skills to maximize productivity in a current position, the cost of training is significantly less than the cost of replacing that employee.