Building future leaders
One of the best decisions you can make is to invest in your employees.
By Fred Koury
July 2009
If you look through a list of top companies and compare it to a list of high-growth companies, you will usually find one thing in common: a commitment to training and development.
These companies see the way to continued growth through a continual development of their employees. Some focus on the basics of the job, some focus on leadership development, and many organizations do both. The equation is simple: Equip employees with the right skills and knowledge, and they’ll whip the competition. And the level of commitment of some of these companies is staggering.
For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers invested more than $10 million in developing 25 global programs dealing with issues of diversity and inclusion. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals sent 1,800 salespeople through an eight-level “career ladder” that recognizes performance and elective credits from approved coursework. Vanguard invests 34 hours of instruction and 17 hours of on-the-job training for its top performers, touching on topics like the company’s leadership values, coaching others and transition strategies. More than 50 percent of those who go through Vanguard’s training have been promoted to a supervisory role.
How much you spend isn’t as important as what you are committed to accomplishing. Regardless of whether you are a $10 million company or a $2 billion company, the same principles apply.
While many CEOs can see the potential of training, they hesitate because of the unknown. What will the return on investment be? How do you measure how much more effective your employees will be? Those are tough questions to answer, especially in an economy where every penny counts.
But if you want to be one of the best companies, you are going to have to take the long-term view and make the commitment. If you work closely with your managers and staff to make sure you are training on the right topics, the benefit will come. You will give employees the skill sets they need to succeed, they will take ownership of projects, and they are more likely to build a long-term commitment with you.
Not every training program has to cost millions. If you work with your local university and community college, you’ll find there are a lot of affordable programs that can meet your needs. Many offer online modules that can be completed at any time, minimizing disruptions among employees. Others offer pre-class and post-class assessments so you can see how much employees learned in the session.
No matter what type of training you choose to pursue, make sure you are completely committed to it. Don’t do it just so you can add a training overview to your company description on your Web site or as a means of enticing job seekers. If you are going to invest in people, then you need to believe in it to make the program work.
Once you are committed, make sure you maximize your return. Survey employees to find out what they are interested in learning about and what they thought of completed training sessions. That information can help you create some initial plans or refine the ones you already have. Training is most effective when all parties involved — employer, trainer and employees — are all committed to the end goals.
In a time when many companies are cutting back, a lot of midsized companies are eliminating training and development programs as an easy way to boost the bottom line. But if you are cutting back, some of your competitors are not. When the economy turns around, they will have a better-trained and more committed work force to take advantage of new opportunities.
The question to ask yourself isn’t, “Should I cut training?” The question should be, “Can I afford not to invest in my people?”
