Human Capital Dilemma: Shall you Train your People

The key point is to customize training to the needs of the organization. 

There are many dilemmas to manage today’s digital workforce, with the speed of change and volatility of the economy, businesses become more dynamic, and talent people also flow around more frequently, What happens if you invest in developing the people and then they leave? What happens if you don’t invest and they stay? Or the matter is: Shall you train your people and how to do it just right?

No Risk, No Reward. If your company aspires to the top tier of success then professionalism comes with it. Building and retaining a professional workforce in such an environment means playing by these rules. Though it is a tricky subject, you should develop your employees so that they can leave, but you should also treat them in a way that they wouldn't want to. Over the short term, there may be savings from lack of employee training, but eventually, it will hit the top as well as the bottom line: employees not at their best performance levels will impact not only winning new and repeat business, but also meeting or exceeding customer expectations. A successful high-performance team is good for business and an important factor in employee retention as well. Albert Einstein once said, "If at first the idea is not absurd then there is no hope for it." There is an immense amount of wisdom behind these words

Employees will do better work for an employer that invested on them. If an employee feels that enterprise invests on the people, both for their personal development and the enterprise interests, they would fully be grateful. If it is not the case, if your talents leaves and turnover grows higher, then it means something else goes wrong, it has to be fixed! Engaged, happy, fulfilled employees do not leave. Help people realize their potential. If you don't train your workforce and they stay, you have a workforce that is not working to their full potential. What does this cost in lost revenues?

Seeing through turnover from varying angles: If talent leaves and turnover is high then there is something fundamentally broken. A good hard and honest introspective look would be well warranted. Every organization will experience turnover and attrition. The ones with decent cultures which find a balance between achieving their mission and investing in their people will be stronger for it. In fact having no attrition is not a good thing either since you don't have the opportunity to bring new blood and energy into your group. 

Consider the saying "people don't quit companies, they quit bosses": It is the responsibility of the leadership to maintain and identify the needs of their employees. Once their security, social and physiological needs are fulfilled, the talents are least bothered on the financial needs and strive best for the organization to achieve their self-esteem. If you invest in you people, create a positive environment, and make a commitment to them, they are more likely to stay. So there is the paradigm shift. Develop your teams and their abilities so that they can do more for your organization. Influencing people and understanding to catering their needs are the great qualities of the leaders. If you have these abilities, you can certainly know the right person to be trained and retained for the organization. Moreover, the confidence level and influence on the resources can be retained at any extreme. The challenge is that the some may want to move on, but a leader must face the economic reality of your vertical and space; build the retention and improvement plan accordingly.

The key point is to customize training to the needs of the organization. Identify areas of improvement individually (tech strengths), provide training on the specific aspect. Have a couple of training sessions which enable them to jump to next level of hierarchy or band. It’s not enough to just invest in dollars on an employee, and not just training for the sake of training, but training that will help company and employee. The focus should be on trust, being patient, understanding the person's abilities (strength /weaknesses) and keeping the monetary bit for the last. Take advantage of the latest digital technology and online training, develop the tailored training solution in the most effective and efficient way to match the needs and demand.

Trust is the two-way street: If an employer shows the trust and faith on an employee, the chances are that the employee would in turn revert with his/her loyalty. There is a risk in certifying your people, but what is the risk of not investing? People want to believe that they are appreciated and cared for in a trusting community. It’s not just about product engineering, there should be a bit of People Engineering as well, that would help to garner loyalty and in turn building stronger processes committing to the vision of the organization. Therefore, as leaders, you have to find a way to achieve both the corporate mission and personal development goals for your people.