For certain businesses, the right people
make the difference between a service
that’s just average or the kind that’s above and beyond industry standard. So
why limit yourself to the types of people
you can hire?
Smart Business spoke to Margaret
Jones, vice president, corporate secretary
at The Graham Company, about how training programs can allow a company to bring
in the best and the brightest — regardless
of their background.
Why implement a training program?
One consideration might be the ability to
hire people from outside of your industry,
especially when a lot of good people do not
have industry-specific training. Some of the
attributes that an employer might look for
are things that you can’t really teach.
If you can hire people who have been
really successful in their fields, with a
strong work ethic and resourcefulness, you
potentially have somebody with an aptitude for meeting client expectations. Once
you identify the types of people you want
for your business, the next step is to design
a training program to teach them your
industry.
When we started our program 22 years
ago, it was almost unheard of for anybody
to hire anyone outside of the insurance
industry because there was so much technical knowledge required. What we decided was that we had the ability to train
somebody in the technical part of the business. In our vision, it was those skills that
were trainable. In our people, we looked
for the intangible skills that were more
innate.
What’s your advice for a business that wants
to invest in training?
First and foremost, identify the types of
people that you want to attract and determine what kind of training is going to be
required for them to be successful.
In our business, we’ve created a three-year training program — six months of
classroom training and two-and-a-half years of on-the-job training. Depending
upon your business and the level of training required, you may not require this kind
of commitment.
You also have to focus on what is the
most important component of your business. If it’s your people, you have to invest
in them. That’s really the main decision. If
your business is such that your people are
not your strength — it’s your technology or
it’s your product — then extensive training
may not make sense. When you’re a professional organization providing a professional service, then your training department is almost like what a research and
development department might be for a
manufacturer — that’s how we look at it.
Are there certain fields from which you’ve
found excellent employees?
We have success in recruiting engineers
and people with financial backgrounds,
such as CPAs. We’ve also found that a lot of
good hires are individuals who have
attended military academies like West
Point or Annapolis. They’re not really raw
talent, because they have been successful
in other fields, and they are going to be successful in whatever they do as long as they’re prepared for it. It’s our experience
that the only way a business owner can
attract these types of people is to not only
assure them that they are going to be successful, but to demonstrate that you have
invested in the resources to give them the
training they need to achieve this success.
Somebody like that is not going to change
fields and industries without the assurance
that they’re going to have the support to be
trained.
Why don’t more companies invest in training?
Basically it’s a financial decision. It’s very
hard for them to get the support of senior
management because of the cost involved.
In our agency, we have a ratio of one person in our technical development department that does training, continuing education and quality assurance for every 12
employees. That’s a huge investment. But
we didn’t start off like that. We started our
training initiative with one person 22 years
ago when our company had 42 employees.
Anything else an owner should consider?
As a business owner, you can create a
competitive advantage in the marketplace
by having better trained, more knowledgeable employees than your competitors.
Well-prepared, highly trained employees
will make a difference for your clients and
your business. Also, with an extensive
training program, you’re able to determine
whether or not somebody is qualified for
the job during the training process, before
they are on the front line servicing your
customers or clients.
MARGARET JONES is vice president, corporate secretary at
The Graham Company. Reach her at (215) 701-5264 or
[email protected].
