Is it Time to Stop Training?

Does an economic slowdown mean it’s time to stop training your employees? Not if you want to remain competitive, retain your best employees, and keep up morale. In lean times, a different strategy is called for, that’s all…

As budgets tighten, companies start looking for places to cut the fat. Often one of the first things to get the chop is training and it’s understandable why this happens. Many training programs show no real return on investment and didn’t address any particular issue, skill or change needed by staff. There is no discernable link between money spent and benefits to the organization.

Let’s face it, providing real justification for training can take effort. Measuring return on investment means doing some work before even considering what training programs to use, buy or create. What skills are lacking or need to improve? Are these measurable in a way our organization can actually show the value of sending employees to this training? What do we want to accomplish with the training? Are we willing to measure skill levels in some manner before AND after the training? How much time is needed? Will one-time or continuous training be called for? It can get pretty involved.

The tighter the budget gets, the more justification is needed. In simple terms, if there is no increased revenue, better products or improved services in some measurable form, the training may not be worth pursuing. Cost-conscious training should improve quality, cost, or service. If it does, it should be easy to justify using your training dollars toward this end. If not, the training can probably be put off until the lean times move on. Remember to focus on improving people, processes, and products.

Look to your organizational objectives. Training should be linked to these objectives to be effective anyway so don’t even think about training until you know what the objectives are. Then consider: Where are we deficient in reaching objectives? What problems do we need to solve? What issues are we facing? How can training help?

Yes, some of the returns aren’t monetary in nature. Consider the “people cost” training cutbacks may cause. If you don’t invest in your staff, they know it and will pay you back in kind—no loyalty, no ownership mentality, low morale, and low retention rates.

Training should always be high on the priority list. You just need to make darn sure it’s worth it and make the effort to prove it. Although we may have less money to spend, our competition keeps increasing globally. It’s in the best interest of the organization to ensure our employees are motivated, up-to-date, and ready to compete. This is the key benefit of training.

Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work is Karen's new book and is available for download in PDF form or in print form on LULU.com.