Bench Strength or Bench Cost

In sports, we call it "Bench Strength". While in corporate world and especially in IT organizations, we measure it and report it as "Bench Cost".

Is that not ironical.

In the recently concluded test series between Australia and India, India won the series against all odds. Everyone has hailed the performance of little known player who made this happen, something which did not happen for many many years.

But behind this, the core reason is the bench strength which was built up over last few years to prepare quality players. Since Rahul Dravid was made in-charge for National Cricket Academy (NCA), things have changed and he needs to be given lot of credit for having a strong line of quality players ready to step in as and when required.

Why can then IT organizations not do the same and have a strong bench which has very skilled employees ready to deliver as and when required - be it to backfill active employees on projects, add capacity to engagements through account mining or to improve our ability to win large projects and improve revenue potential ?

Creating a quality bench needs upfront investment and efforts. It needs to be mentor driving skills development and not just giving access to skills portal to employees to go through courses and be ready. But its completely worth all the efforts. My experience says that sooner than later, we are able to get return on the investments made with good margins in long term. And organizations who do this effectively have continued to grow.

Why do then organizations fear bench. Is it lack of belief that we will not win new business. Or is it that we fear that they would leave the company if we skill them up. Or are there other reasons.

Would like to hear thoughts.

Someone has rightly said "Train your employees well so that they can leave whenever they want. And treat them so well that they never want to leave".