When I was listening to the president speak last night, it struck me when he said that we all must commit to obtaining more advance training or learning –well I can\’t agree with him more. A competitive marketplace is often separated by the better trained and more talented work force. This made me think—when I am at companies conducting management training sessions, what seems clear to me is that mass classes are not effective, because many of the attendees don\’t want to attend or frankly, theydon\’t have any \”skin \” in the game or financial investment in the training course.
I have often advised senior managers if you want more bang for the training buck, you should offer the sales people or managers a chance to have withheld a percent of their commission checks that will be set aside for frequent training or professional business coaching. Those employees who don\’t want to participate is OK but they won\’t get training subsidized by the company. Those that do participate and commit money will have made an investment in a career of learning . The company could split the responsibility with the employee so both parties have a stake. Two things are accomplished by an investment by the employee–it shows how committed the employee is to being a professional sales person or manager and it addresses how involved they will be with the training class.
I think the days of everyone being trained by the company are over–training is costly because so many in the classes don\’t want to be there and/or they have no investment in the training course. So bottomline, isn\’t it time that an invividual be given an opportunity to make a financial investment to improving themselves.
So what do you think?