Will the corporate winners be seperated from the losers over the next 10 years by how much development they undertake with their employees?

It may depend on who you think will be in your workforce over the next 10 years.

If it's Generation Y then you may have to read on ...

Recent research into Generation Y says that if generation Y people feel that they are being developed and the work is challenging they'll stay. If they are not being challenged and not developed then they will leave...

You and I both know that training is only one aspect and way of developing people.
In this article I'm going to leap from  developing people and straight to one facet of developing people and that is training.
I'm only doing this because I find that if people do not train their people that it's usually a good indicator that they are not developing them either....

Every manager in every organisation recognises the importance of training people. However we find that things get in their way.

What prevents them?

We’ve found that managers and organisations usually come up with around 5 reasons not to train.   

1. “Our people are experienced. They don’t need to be trained.”

2. "We tried training and it didn’t work.”

3. “Our organization (or department, or division) is too small.”

4. “We can’t afford it.”

5. “We don’t have time.”

I'd like to take a look at each of these reasons...
Let's start with the organisation or manager who says,
“Our people don’t need to be trained. They have years of experience.”

 Imagine Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United saying to his board of directors. 
“Our people are all experienced, so we’re going to skip training this month. We don’t need it.”
How do you think the team would stand up against the competition?

Is your business the same today as it was 20 years ago?
Business is changing. Successful organizations don’t do business in the same way today
as they did five years ago, or 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago.

The second reason 
  “We tried training and it didn’t work.”

There are lots of other factors to take into account before you suggest training
and if they are not in place then training may well not work.

Training is a little like going to the gym.If you haven’t worked out for years, and you start a heavy exercise program,
you’re going to be uncomfortable. Whether you’re talking about training or gym work .
If you do it occasionally you grow sore; if you do it regularly you grow strong.

The third reason for not training: “We’re too small.”
 It’s important to understand that training is equally important for organisations
of all sizes. If an organization has one hundred people, and one person is not
operating at maximum capacity, that’s one percent of the entire organisation.
On the other hand, if an organization has just two people, it may be easy to say
 “We can’t justify training” … but, if one of those two people is not operating at
 maximum effectiveness, that’s 50 percent of the entire organization.
So training is not equally important to all sizes of organisations it's actually more important if you're small.

The fourth reason: “We can’t afford it.”

If you think the cost of training is expensive.
You could always compare it with the cost of incompetence!
In today’s service-oriented environment poorly trained staff will drive your
customers into the arms of your competition.

Number five. “We don’t have the time.”
This is an exercise is self-deception.
If you are like most executives, you sometimes ask yourself, “Why is it we never have time to do it right, but we always make time to do it again?”

The manager who says, “We’re so busy we don’t have time for training” makes about as much sense as the woodcutter who says, “I’m so busy cutting down trees, I don’t have time to sharpen my axe.”

How long should you continue training your staff? Your answer is probably more of a question “How long do you want your people to keep improving?”

Let me know if this has helped clear your views of developing people

and if you think we can help then email us on info@rainmaker-coaching.co.uk