inform. educate. connect. Issue #9 - August 2010

Are You Training to Exist in the Future?

By Jim Hopkins, JK Hopkins Consulting

I asked a training manager at a small company why they were postponing for the second year now the skill development of supervisors and managers. She said that although it is still a priority, it is not something we can do this year. By the way, that was back in February, which means two months into the year and they threw in the towel. I’ve known this training manager for a long time, so I asked her why the company did not have a future. There was silence on the line, and then she asked me what I meant by that comment.

If we remember that the basic function of any training department within a company is to prepare employees for the job they perform, then what we train each year spells out what employees need to be able to do. If the skills being developed are all new hire oriented then the focus is on growth and/or turnover. If the skills being developed are in addition to basic job functions then the company is focused on career development and employee retention.

When I answered my friend’s concern over the future of her company, I had to ask why managers that did not have basic supervisory and management communication skills would not need them in the coming months. She had no valid response, but I did. If the company was not going to need people with management skills in the future, it begs to ask the question of if the company planned to be around. Could they be planning to close doors, merge with another company, or downsize their employee population?  It turns out it was none of the above, and the company is now training their managers today.

You see my friend went back to her training plan, and noticed that the reason supervisory skills and management development was on the plan, was to build a missing skill set in their managers. The goal was to prevent having to hire external talent and develop existing people to assume promotional opportunities. So, when she went back to the management team that had postponed this skill development, she asked them a simple question. If these skills are needed to prepare us for the future, are we no longer planning to have a future? Oh, I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall that day! With a little further explanation from her on that question, the decision was reversed, and last month they began training supervisory and management development!

Yet how different is this scenario if the training you are trying to implement is not on a training plan? What if you find a need to increase better communications between all employees and it would then allow for improved productivity and a decrease in employee relations issues? These are of course valid reasons even in the short run, but well worth the expense in the long run. 

So I encourage any size organization to exam the list of skills they are training employees to perform as well as the list of skills being postponed. Ask yourself how long our company is planning to exist, and does our training plan match that goal. You no doubt could save a ton of cash if you stopped training because you plan to go out of business, but what a shame it would be if your plan was to stay in business and your lack of readiness closed the doors for you.

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