QUOTATION 32

ZIG ZIGLAR ON WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST IN STAFF TRAINING

Use this to remind you of the absolute necessity to train your staff.

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) was an American businessman, motivational speaker and author. He recognised that some managers saw staff training as a waste of both time and money because, once trained, many staff left. He countered this argument by suggesting that:

The only thing worse than training people and having them leave is not training people and having them stay.

Zig Ziglar

WHAT TO DO

  • Accept that any member of staff with an ounce of sense or ambition recognises that they must constantly update their skills and knowledge to remain marketable. The best will leave if you don’t provide training opportunities. You will then incur the cost of recruiting and training a new person and suffering reduced productivity as they learn the job. So, in the long run, you don’t save anything by not training your staff.
  • Recognise that training doesn’t have to be expensive. People can learn how to do a job, or do their job better, by being taught how to do it by an expert member of staff (sitting with Nelly), shadowing a member of staff or attending the free training events organised by suppliers and consultants on how to use new systems and/or machines that they have installed. It’s also feasible to arrange in-house training events given by other members of staff: e.g. what’s wrong with the accountant doing a presentation for staff on, say, budgetary control?
  • When staff are sent on a short course, ensure that the organisation gets value for money by agreeing with the person a set of learning objectives. When they return from the training, have them do a short training session for their colleagues. The terror of having to deliver training to colleagues on their return will mean that they pay attention while on the course and, by cascading down their learning, the unit cost of training is reduced.
  • When staff go on professional courses, agree to pay the fees only on successful completion of the course. If you are afraid they will leave immediately after they get their qualification, make it a condition of funding that they stay for an agreed period of time after completion of their course. One or two years is not unreasonable.
  • Always remember, ignorance costs money. For example, what percentage of Microsoft Office do you think the average person uses? No, I don’t know either. But, when you consider the huge range of modules on undergraduate and post-graduate maths courses that are devoted to using Microsoft Excel, you get an inkling of how little is used. If your staff could use just 20 per cent more of the facilities they have on their computer systems, think of the improvement in productivity that would produce.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • What’s my attitude to training staff? Do I see it as a cost or an investment?
  • Do I see the training I undertake as a cost or an investment?
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