Anyone who has spoken to a hiring manager has heard the complaint that good people are very hard to find. The secret behind this is that there simply aren’t any good people available! Now, there are plenty of highly skilled and qualified employees in the workforce…they just don’t go to market. They are just too darned happy where they are. A major reason for this is that they did not necessarily start out as highly skilled and qualified as they have become, but were elevated to that level through constant and competent business and management coaching.
Many CEO’s have a Harvard MBA, but below the CEO level a large percentage of management started out at the bottom working their way up. There is no real truth to the idea that one begins at the bottom and stays there for their career. It is widely recognized that competent training management, often referred to as “on the job training,” is one of the primary ways companies increase the value of their in-house talent. This is because that value does not leave the company.
When workers see that a company invests in them, through conferences, seminars, and other forms of training management, they see that they are working for a company that cares about them. This is one of the main reasons that they don’t go on the market, looking for another company that probably won’t treat them too.
One more dirty secret is that training management leaves a company whose employees don’t know exactly what they’re worth. Unlike the Harvard MBA, they don’t have a piece of paper that suddenly makes them much more expensive to hire. At the same time, they are often just as motivated, or more so, after taking on the job training (while being paid!) than someone slugging through academia. This is one many reasons companies are eager for training management nowadays.
Just as important to a company as training management is another function: change management. Would that the market never moved, that once we designed a product, we could keep selling it forever! However pleasant that thought might be, the reality is that change is a constant in this world, and even products as venerable as Coca-Cola get redesigned from time to time – to say nothing of the blitz ad campaigns! A company must be able to keep its workforce fresh and filled with vitality through continuous management.
While a piece of paper from Harvard never changes, continuous changes are a fact of life for corporations across the world. With the right training and change management, companies can keep on top, turning weak employees into strong ones, and allowing someone with out-dated qualifications into fresh and exciting new areas. And that’s something even Harvard struggles with.
Through continuous management, a company is able to keep its workforce very new. One more dirty secret is that training management leaves a company whose employees don’t know exactly what they’re worth. Another function of a company is change management, just as important as training. Sure, many CEO’s have a Harvard MBA, but well below the CEO level, the fact is that a large percentage of business and management coaching started out at the bottom. With the right training and management, companies can keep on top, turning weak employees into strong ones, and allowing someone with out-dated qualifications into fresh and exciting new areas.
- George Purdy
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