Dear Ammar,

Our company has given up on training employees.  One of two things seem to happen after training.  If the employee learns something, then his performance improves.  However, almost immediately, the employee makes demands for a higher salary.   Another possibility is that we see no improvement whatsoever.     I hear a lot about the importance of training for organizations, but at our company, we do not seem to get any benefits from it. What are we missing?

Regards,

Feras

Dear Feras,

I get this concern from managers and business owners quite too often.  Many Jordanian firms are worried about training people and then losing them to competitors, after incurring their training costs. 

Training is not the culprit here.  No one leaves a company because they got trained.  People leave a company because they are not getting what they want or to where they want with their current employer.  Companies have to look at this issue from the right perspective.  Starting off, training helps team members build the skills required to improve their job performance, which in turn reflects positively on the organization’s balance sheet.  Not giving employees the required training will lead to dissatisfied customers and loss of opportunities for the company, leading to loss of revenue and negatively affecting the bottom line.  I do not see training as an option, but a necessity.  The right question for organizations is: can we afford not to provide required training? The answer is definitely no.  Training is a company’s investment in itself, by investing in training team members.  If you are training team members and they leave, that means only one thing: the organization is not doing something wrong, and it is not training.  Team members leave when the organization is not paying them enough, compared to competitors.  Also, team members leave when there are problems with the work environment, or when put in an unhealthy workplace.  Sometimes, team members leave because their organization is not providing them with the right resources and support, so they are leaving out of frustration.  I suggest you do some research on why employees are leaving.  Trust me.  It is not because of training.  Once you find out what the problem is fix it. 

Let us look at from another angle: can a company afford not to train team members? Then competitors’ team members will provide a more superior service, leading to loss of revenue and customers for the company not providing proper training.  A company cannot afford but to train to build capabilities. 

There are things companies can do to help retain team members after training.  Some companies use “Golden Handcuffs,” also referred to as “deferred compensation plans.”  A company promises to reimburse for the training or education of its team members if they stay with the company for a specified length of time after training.  The second technique is the “Iron Handcuffs” which focuses on penalties rather than incentives.  If employees leave before a certain period from getting training, they pay punitive damages to the company.  For example, a company might require a team members to agree to reimburse the company for the cost of the training should they leave before a specified amount of time. I am not sure of the enforceability of such measures from a legal perspective in Jordan.

The jury is out on how effective such actions are.  Some CEO’s argue that they would rather lose the training cost than have someone stay at the company just because he does not want to pay for the training.  I believe, in such cases, a gentleman’s agreement and a handshake is better than any formal papers. 

Finally, when debating whether to train or not, a company should ask the following questions if itself:

• How much money has the company lost due to a mistake by an untrained team member?
• How much money could have been made if a trained employee performed the work properly?  
• How many customers did the company lose due to lack of training of staff?
• How much time do staff and management spend fixing errors that could have been avoided if you provided training?

Most will agree that the cost of not training is far more than any training investment required getting the job done.  Contrary to common belief, training actually builds team members’ loyalty.  Team members are more committed to companies that show commitment to their people by providing them with training.