I am a proponent of L&D and I believe it is good for the country for businesses to be training people and developing them.
But is it really good for the business?
Does it help people to feel valued as the business has invested in them for the future, or does it make them ambitious, wanting more (pay or training) and eventually become dissatisfied with their lot so they leave?
...and how does it make the other employees feel, the ones that don't get so much of the business' money and time invested in their development? (and does it impact upon their friends and contemporaries in other businesses who may not be receiving such investment?)
(I have in the back of my mind a statement I saw earlier that L&D helps staff to feel more motivated and engaged in their work.)
I'd be interested in everyone's views and experiences around this topic :)
Replies
I'm on my way to London now for my "Leadership and Management Development" module workshop. (Good luck Jo!)
I feel quite pleased that I'm not the only one thinking along these lines!
http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr/news/1151808/developing-leaders-not-...
Hi Alison,
Learning & Development is one of the key contributors to employee engagement. In an ideal world, yes it should make employees more ambitious, but its important to realise that all training should be completely relevant to the work they do and that you are able to link this to the businesses objectives.
You could link professional qualifications to pay scales but I've never heard of anyone leaving an organisation because they've been trained too much. As the saying goes, what happens if we train them and they leave? But what happens if we don't and they stay?
To address your concern on how the training is split across the organisation, you should have a training plan that details each course and informs staff which courses are relevant to which teams/departments, again these should be linked to the business strategy & include clear aims and objectives for each course.
Finally, I believe in quality over quantity. Ensure you have a robust evaluation strategy so that you can measure each events effectiveness. You could spend £1000 on a course that was irrelevant, poorly delivered and did not meet the needs of the delegates or spend £500 on a well designed course that completely meets the needs of all delegates. But on the surface this would look like an underinvestment.
Hope this helps :)
Thank you Haydn for your thoughts, I really appreciate you joining in the discussion :)
I agree with you regarding relevant training so employees are competent to do their current role. But what about developing them for future roles?
I also agree with linking development opportunities to the business strategy - but what should the strategy be aiming for? Development for a few possible job roles that might become available in the near future? (or development for all on an individual basis, even when more expansive roles aren't expected to become available within the business for a while?)
Where I work (drinks manufacturer) I am worried that I'm beginning to see a link between development training and staff leaving the business. ie those that the company are investing in (those that appear promising for the business strategic needs) are those that go off to pursue other opportunities. We are losing the very people we hope to keep and that is after we have invested in them. Presumably they want to spread their wings and gain experience in different environments. They become ambitious (they have had their confidence boosted and their horizons have widened) and want to achieve their full potential!
I guess turnover is healthy and provides opportunities for others - but how much turnover is healthy?
Lots of questions. Sorry about that. I do agree with everything you have said above though. :)
(We do have numerous staff that work with us for the whole of their working life, or for many years. We operate in a rural area with a loose labour market for unskilled workers and offer good terms and conditions including training to do the job and some opportunity for progression :) )
Hi Alison
Great questions in both posts. And i'm answering with more questions!!
Its interesting that you mention that the people you train and develop then go off and leave but you only presume about their reasons. Have you asked why they are leaving? Do they tell you the truth? If a company is willing to invest in their development is there anything within the company that is causing this? And can you do anything about it?
And how do you replace those that leave?
More food for thought although I suspect you have the answers,
Warm regards
Blake
Where people are concerned I doubt we will ever have all the answers and I know I certainly don't!
In our case, in the last few years the business has invested most in our senior leaders with leadership training and in our engineering community with technical training.
It is the senior leaders that are then moving on that bothers me. It is as if they use the company resources to their own ends, without feeling fully committed. I'm not entirely convinced that the training delivers what they really need to do their jobs, but I have never seen any evaluation of the training they receive. (It's not very transparent, they just disappear off for the training and we don't hear much about it. They never share what they have learnt for example.)
We have higher turnover amongst our senior leaders than the rest of the business. Interestingly, they tend to be recruited from outside the business, so are not long-serving members of staff that have worked their way up.
I find it rather odd.
The business doesn't learn from it, as the next bunch of new leaders then assign themselves lots of training ( and they always like to do " team building" as well, which is another bugbear of mine, as often they dont seem to act as a team, even after the training, but rather as a bunch of ambitious individuals vying for individual success)
I'd love to know if any records are kept of the training they do or if anyone discusses it with them. Their bosses are the executive committee, so way above my station!
I guess I'll never know :)