“Good luck!”
Who doesn’t love to hear those words? Typically, these are words of encouragement. Joyful, even enthusiastic; designed to leave someone with pleasant feelings about the future. They are not, however, designed to be the two words that describe the sum total of a company’s training program.
Really.
Back in the late 80s when I started as a sales representative for a west coast medical company, I went out to corporate headquarters for…uh, training. Or so I thought. My first day on the job, I went on a couple of sales calls with a sales manager. We said hello, picked up a couple of small orders (literally, we picked them up, they were written on a piece of paper and left for us), and headed back to the office. After lunch, someone spent some time showing me some of the company’s products and where to find them in a catalog (just showing…not explaining or doing anything, you know, instructional). Then we had a three-day national sales meeting and I headed back home. “Good luck,” the boss said.
I’m gonna need it, I thought to myself. Training? You can’t be serious. It wasn’t training, it was a disaster. Disorganized. Disjointed. Dis-aster. One week in and I’m thinking the decision I made to join the company was just that – a disaster.
What Does Your Training Look Like?
I never cease to be amazed at companies that provide little or no training opportunities for employee or managers, and can’t understand why employee commitment and performance are lacking. The fact is, when a company fails to comprehensively train employees – and provide ongoing training and development – a couple of things happen, neither of which is good for the company.
First, employees that aren’t well-trained rarely perform up to their potential. Why would they? Even elite athletes, singers, and stage performers train and train and train. They are constantly learning and developing their skills. But why? Aren’t they already good enough? One thing is for sure: there is a world of difference between twenty years of experience and one year of experience twenty times. If a company wants increases in productivity and improvements in workplace performance, training has to be a part of the culture.
Secondly, when a company doesn’t train its people, it might as well hang a sign on the wall that says, “We Don’t Care About You (At All).” A little harsh? I don’t think so, and neither do your employees. They make the direct connection – you don’t want to invest in my training and development, but you do want me to continually improve performance…how does that work exactly? It doesn’t. Worse for employers, recently released research indicates that companies who ignore the development of line employees do so to their own detriment. In a recent report entitled, Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: A Summary Report on the Experiences of Companies That Improve Conditions at the Base, researchers discovered that when companies take care of people, those people take care of the company (Yeah, I know…shocker!):
A new McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy study published by the Harvard Business Review rolls up conclusive findings that, no matter the size of your business, the way you treat employees at the bottom rung of the company ladder has an impact on your bottom line. (from Portfolio.com article).
One of the findings in this report was the positive impact that training has on companies. Turns out, it sorta makes a difference. Those companies that invested in more training, “and offered more advance opportunities for those on the lowest rungs of the ladder…were rewarded with lower turnover, easier recruitment, and increased efficiency.”
But We DO Train our Employees
Maybe you do; maybe you don’t. Most employee on-boarding processes are random, disorganized, or incomplete. But those companies still claim they train their people. Few companies truly train for core skills and then test to ensure competency. Most often, companies hand employees the H.R. Manual or the Policy & Procedure Handbook, cover the highlights in just a few minutes, and then leave the employee to figure out the rest. And they say exactly the same thing, “We train our people.”
Sure you do. All I have to say is, “Good luck!”
