The Training & Development Function

'I hate every minute of training. But I said, don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' - Mohammed Ali

?General

Training involves development of skills and transfer of knowledge that enables someone to perform their current jobs at acceptable standards. Please understand that 'Training' is about skillsets that are already present.

Development includes activities including skill and knowledge acquisition and experience, that prepares someone to do tomorrows jobs at anticipated standards. Please remember 'Development' is about skills which will be required in the future.

So if there are no developmental activities carried out by an organisation, tomorrow is bound to catch them unaware and unprepared for its demands. How many companies are actually engaging Trainers to upskill their employees even when it is blatantly evident that the current level of skillsets are not giving you the results you want.

Blaming the economy, or Covid or the Government, or the Elections will not change anything. The only way in which you will get out of this is by doing something different.

And to do something differently, your people have to learn how to.

The Situation

Imagine you are the CEO of a soccer club, or that of a cricket or baseball team in responsible to ensure that they win the championship. OK? Now, your players are not performing. You have lost 5 matches in a row and your dream of holding that trophy in your hands is slowing dissolving into thin air. In short, you are staring down the barrel and looking for answers.

This is what I propose:-

1. Reduce the practise time (they are not performing anyway).
2. Cut back on Coaches Expenditure, its expensive and you need to cut your losses. Instead of a professional coach, use the in-house Vice President.
3. Reduce the Budget by 15%.
4. Give a pep talk to the Team and tell them that if they don't perform, they will lose their places in the side and would have to seek new teams to play in.

Makes sense to you? Or are you questioning my sanity?

Tell me something, even if you dont have a degree in psychology to back you up, if you put someone already not performing under pressure, do you think he will perform better?

The above is what EXACTLY most business owners are doing. Reducing the Marketing Budget, stopping all Trainings, and threatening the employees with '...or else'. And I am aware that some of you, when you read this article will say - running a football team and running a business enterprise is not the same.

No, it's not.

What is common - are human beings. And human beings behave the same way everywhere. Whether it's on the football field, the cricket pitch, the marketplace or the boardroom. And to hone behaviour, to add to held skills and to get them to imbibe new skills, training has to be taken as a requisite entity NOT a perquisite used to commend good behaviour and tick mark a required activity!

What we need to do

Change the culture from 'fear controlled' to 'reward controlled'.

Imagine if your team’s mindset changed. If there was a work culture that proactively seeks to solve problems, continuously, small steps at a time, what would happen? This mindset would mean your company could faster improve efficiency, reduce costs, and get happier employees while at it.

There are just 5 things that you compulsorily need to ensure (either use in-house Trainers or engage Professionals to ensure Behavioural Change Trainings) which will help develop a problem-solving mindset. I like to use the vowels AEIOU to make it easy to remember.

• A - Act to Change. As the Business Owner, you lead the change. And if you cut budgets for developmental activity, you are giving out a signal that you are not in charge - the market is!
• E - Emphasize teamwork. Together you can do anything. Which means everyone needs to pitch in. If you are an organisation, you will have the Pareto's Principle working for you - only 20% of the people would be doing 80% of the workload. It is time to redistribute and make everyone accountable - after equipping them with the skillsets that they need to do what they have to.
• I - Innovate and Test. Some changes will work, some won't. So once you innovate, test it in a small segment to check its efficacy before rolling it out throughout the network.
• O - Organize. The pandemic may be a good time for you to have a relook at your Organisation Chart. Are you working efficiently? Or are you top heavy with too many supervisors and only a few being supervised?
• U - Unleash creativity. Normal is not working and insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Be creative, get hold of a Business Consultant, see what you can do differently.

An ongoing Employee Morale KPI means you can monitor employee morale trends in your business while testing new things to see how your employees react. This will help show you if your improvements are working. With a mindset of continuous workplace improvement, you can improve your company’s bottom line while getting a company culture with more productive days at work.

So when is the best time to start promoting continuous improvement at your workplace?

Conclusion

To cater to any upheaval, there needs to be a proactive approach shown by the management in the form of a strategy. And implementation of that strategy requires development of intermediate skills which move the organisation from where it is to where it wants to be, and future skills, which represents the needs of the attained strategic profile.

Any strategy is as good as the people implementing it.

Training and Development of your employees should be receiving top priority and investment in good times and bad, especially during bad, because there are no other ways to prepare your people to implement the strategy that you want executed, which will take you out of trouble and into success when all around you, businesses are collapsing.