Training Pays
by Miki Saxon
Are you suffering from high turnover? Are your people disengaged?
Do your stakeholders have high expectations of your next product/service?
Are you spending time and money competing for the same skills that your competitors — and everyone else — need, while trimming your current workforce through attrition or layoffs?
According to the Greek poet Archilochus, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”
Companies are swift to blame a talent shortage when they aren’t meeting market expectations, but are slow to invest in their own people. And when hiring they only want people with X years of direct experience in [whatever], even when whatever just launched.
Moreover, hiring someone to do what they did previously practically guarantees one of two results (or both).
High turnover and/or a lack of engagement due to boredom.
Very few people enjoy doing the same thing year after year (do you?) and that is the big danger of hiring someone who has been there/done that, especially if you don’t provide a learning environment and new challenges.
However, providing them goes directly against the prevailing attitude that only the young can learn.
If that describes your own mindset, I suggest you read Bruno Michel’s description of his 35 year career (and counting), currently an IBM researcher, who radically reinvented himself six times resulting in a total of 160+ patents and 250+ peer reviewed publications.
You may not care about the publications, but the patents should make you sit up and rethink your ideas about how you value your people.
Michel’s belief is that people should change jobs every seven years.
That means you have a choice.
You can supply talent to other companies.
Or you can supply training and opportunities internally and keep your people happy and engaged.
Image credit: Patient Care Technician
