Ed Krow turns irrelevant and ineffective HR functions into strategic contributors.
Getty
Current events are causing many leaders to rethink the financial situation of their departments and organizations. Unfortunately, I am seeing some business leaders chopping out training budgets.
I believe this is one of the worst things that we can do as leaders during times of crisis.
During challenging times, we need people at their absolute best, and one of the ways that we do that is by ensuring that they are well trained and motivated to perform at their peak. How can we keep them at their peak if we take away one of the pieces of the pie that helps them stay at their peak?
I believe that now is the perfect time for us to be training our people. Here’s why.
The bottom line is the economy will rebound, and here is what will happen: Our people are going to remember how they were treated during this tough time. Did we nurture our relationship with them? Did we give them something extra for going the extra mile for us? If you’re reading this and you’re not sure that your company has gone above and beyond for your people during this time and you know that your people have gone above and beyond for you, you run the serious risk of losing them once this crisis passes.
Today’s workers not only crave training and development opportunities, they demand it. If we do not provide it to them, they are going to find an employer who will provide it to them. After all, think about the business owner who refused to train his people and when asked why, he said, “Well, if I train them, they’ll know what they’re doing even better and they’ll leave me.” To which the human resources strategist said, “So we should not train them and hope that they stay?” Do you see the irony here?
It is sad to me that in times of budgetary crisis, training dollars always seem to be the first thing taken off the block, and I am not sure why. If we’re using our training dollars appropriately, we would know that they are an investment in our people to keep them fine-tuned, engaged and performing. You would never think of furloughing your maintenance staff and not keeping your machines in top-running order because most businesses recognize that their machinery is an asset. And so, they want to keep the machines oiled, greased, properly running and preventive maintenance done to ensure that the asset is well protected and performing.
Our people are no different: They are an asset that needs to be managed, well oiled and taken care of in order to perform. We get the same results when we stop investing and maintaining our people with training and development. Our people are unable to stay up to date on the latest trends; they often will get discouraged because they are being asked to do more with less and less experience. We’re asking them to take on projects that maybe they would not have otherwise had an opportunity to do because we’re on reduced staff, and yet we’re taking away a tool that would allow them to rise to the occasion.
So, I ask you to consider what would happen if you kept investing in your people during this time. Better yet, what would happen if you took the training dollars that you have and expected more return on your investment during this time?
Let me tell you a story. Several years ago, I sent my human resources team off to a national human resources conference. They came back and were very excited about all they had learned. They reported back on the sessions they attended and the great ideas that they heard. As the meeting ended and the reports were finished, I looked at my team and I said, “What are we going to do with this information?” They sat and stared back at me. I said, “I want you to go back to your offices, take all of these great ideas you just presented here and come up with a game plan for implementing them in our organization.” To me, this sounds like a very basic expectation, but I want you to ask yourself when you send your team off to conferences and trainings if they are in fact held accountable when they get back to implementing the things that they learned at the conference. If not, then I agree: What a complete and total waste of money. However, if you are going to make the investment in online learning or coaching for your people, what should you expect them to do as a result?
This is a two-way experience: We invest the training dollars and the time in our people in exchange for a new set of behaviors and results attainment from them. Absent this two-way exchange, we are wasting our money, and I would wholeheartedly support you removing training dollars from your budget when funds get tight. However, true leaders see the impact that training has not just on their people but the benefits it drives within the organization itself, and they ask themselves, “How can I make this happen?” instead of saying, “I can’t make this happen.”
If you are considering tightening your belt and chopping off training dollars, ask yourself whether you truly can afford to not have a training budget for your people during these tough times. Can you afford now more than ever to not invest in the future of your organization? It’s my belief that the companies that continue to invest in their organization and their people during current events will be the ones that will not only survive the current crisis but will thrive in the new economy that we will see in the coming months.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
