I was speaking with a client at dinner recently and she mentioned to me that her organization was looking to cut training because they couldn’t see the value in it. She was frustrated as you can imagine. Her boss believes that employees would rather have a few extra dollars in their paychecks rather than take training. While certainly employees wouldn’t balk at a few extra dollars, the training is necessary to enable employees to enhance their skills and gain necessary new skills to ensure the business can meet short- and long-term goals.
Training encompasses so much more than this executive even knows – orienting new employees to the organization, helping employees gain new skills to take on new roles and responsibilities, enabling for employees to grow into leadership roles, helping employees gain skills to learn new technologies introduced into the organization. The list goes on and on! Not to mention that training engages employees because the company is investing in them personally and the development of their skills and knowledge.
When companies begin to pull the reins in on the budget, they so often go first to learning & development (training) to make cuts. Do just a bit of research and what you find is that those companies who have stopped investing in their employees to reduce the budget have impacted themselves in one or more of the following ways:
- Reduced the ability to get new products and services out to market, or, those that do make it out to market are not of top quality or do not meet the needs of the consumer
- Fallen behind their competitor who continued to invest in their employees
- Disengaged and demoralized employees, in many cases losing the best employees to the competition
- Had increased customer dissatisfaction
- Reduced collaboration within the company which does not enable for innovation in products and services
The list goes on.
When we blanket cut out, or threaten to, training within the organization, we are being short-sighted. Yes, we may need to refocus our training efforts, but we should not be eliminating all training of our employees. Without properly trained and motivated staff, our businesses cannot possibly survive in the long term.
It is often, unfortunately, the first area cut when budgets are being reviewed and must be reduced. Employees who feel “taken care of” – which includes skills development and opportunities to learn/new experiences – are more apt to stay with a company and utilize those new skills at the same organization who trained them/provided them opportunities.
That’s sad. How can companies not see the value in training? By training their employees, they are giving them more than just money. They are giving them the skills that they can even use after they leave the company. They can even use it as they continue working for your company. It’s win-win.