TO HELL WITH TRAINING

Whenever economy is hit with a flu, the most common strategies companies roll out are like Crocin – layoff’s, axe trainings, freeze on hiring, salary cuts and so on which is primarily guided by the belief which says – when in trouble follow the herd! Training is certainly the last thing on corporates mind especially when the economy is in doldrums, demand for products and services are declining and there are no visible signs of immediate recovery. It is in such purse-string environment, people who look at training are either considered crazy or are ridiculed for their insensitiveness towards corporate bottom-line. However it is in this market of “all know” and “herd mentality” types – some crazy folks go out and make a difference in the long run. For these crazy folks training is like investing in equities – while the bull run may appear to be over for now – you cannot deny the fact that returns are going to be the best in the longer term. Some of you might think that there are no guarantees; then in that case, who said that layoffs, and bunch of redundant HR strategies would improve bottom-line of the companies in the long run.

Whatever your approach, you can continue to ignore training if some or all of these hold true for your organization:

People are your biggest liabilities:

Well, not many management folks will have the gumption to talk upfront and call people as their biggest liabilities (esp. in a knowledge economy), however if layoffs were any indicators of this – the message is pretty loud and clear. Show people the door, save on salaries and perks and margins will increase.

Cut Costs at all Costs:(and Value as well)

When management folks wear the cost controlling spectacle, in their race to cut costs and improve margins they often start to cut value as well. So if you are one of those companies, keep going. You will soon run out the need to train people because customers will notice the declining value of your products and services and you know what follows next – a huge ad campaign to bring those customers back to your company.

Focus Short term:

When companies bid goodbye to their long term goals and vision – it’s the surest recipe for small and incremental gains. And why the hell do you need to train people for short term?

Acquire rather than build:

Some organizations believe in acquiring talent from the market rather than training and building it over the years. After all there is nothing like learning on the job and you believe the skills are like weeds, they grow with the job themselves.

Customer Service – what’s that:

Customers flock for your products, but when it comes to services and support, you rank possibly nowhere close to customer satisfaction. Your customer acquisition cost is lower, but customer retention cost is astronomically high. You simply don’t care for customer service. Well that’s a good enough reason to not care for training.

Copy+Paste Strategies:

In the name of best practices and world-class strategies most companies take copy+paste ready-to-use strategies and try to mould them to suit organizational requirements. These copy+paste strategies are sure indicator that people have stopped thinking and when no one is thinking, what’s the point in training people who cannot think?

Overflowing order books:

Many companies that have overflowing order books and very high customer loyalty irrespective of macro economic environment don’t really care about customers or employees. So why should they care about training at all?

Hmm…so what should you be doing?

If you value your customers, you have to learn to value your employees. Help build their competencies and they will make you flourish – through thick and thin. Yes, you mist think of containing training costs, but not cutting them. Contain them by using internal training programs, exploring internal expertise and improving stock-competencies. Training your assets (you call your employees, your assets, right!) therefore is always a good idea. What an idea sirjee?

Others can hell with training for now!

About SCAN Consulting Network:

SCAN an acronym of Strategy, Culture, Alignments and kNowledge is a boutique-consulting outfit offering highly customized solutions in the areas of corporate strategy and business solutions. Founded by core team of professional from IIMA and other leading B Schools in the country, SCAN portfolio comprise of Talent Solutions, Performance Solutions and Organization Solutions for corporates and “SoftSkills Rx Program” for B Schools. Our consultants were practicing managers and therefore bring hands-on international experience of designing and implementing business solutions. Having trained more than 10,000 corporate managers and logged more than 30,000 training hours, SCAN bring in more than 100 man-years of experience in providing training and consulting solutions that enable our clients to do their business better. Currently, we are offering our services to clients in India and the middle –east.