Have you heard this before?

Why would we train people in new skills when they will use them to get a job elsewhere?

Now, take a moment to think about what you are saying here. It seems to me that you are saying a number of things:

• We don’t believe that our people will stay so we are not willing to invest in them;
• We don’t believe in our people; and
• The environment that we create in our business is not conducive to keeping employees.

Rough, perhaps, but true.

Now, think about this. What is the cost of not training them.  High turnover, low productivity, lack of engagement and they’re certainly unlikely to develop the skills required to help your business grow. Result: they’ll leave anyway…for a company who will offer them training.

Training isn’t an employee perk. If anything, it should be seen as an essential offering for an employer. Think of your employees as customers and ask yourself: Where is the value add from me to my employees? Why would they choose us over anyone else? How can we help them?

Nor does training have to be expensive.  It can be done in-house and it doesn’t need to be done with a whiteboard, handouts and flipcharts. All it needs is a little time, creativity and planning. One of the best ideas that I’ve come across was where a company set up a series of book clubs for employee and management development. Simple concept where the company buys the books and people take turns in facilitating the discussions. There’s all sorts of development that takes place in those groups: practice chairing meetings, public speaking skills, new learning from the source materials, innovative ideas that can be applied to the core business etc etc

The fact is that people like to be given proper training: it gives them a feeling of personal development, which motivates them and helps them to do their job better.

So, if your firm does not have a training plan then get busy and, don’t forget, ask your team what they want.

What do you think?

Thanks to hellscrm for the image