Getting the most out of your most valuable assets: Your people

By Roger Talayaratne

People are the most valuable asset, only people can be made to appreciate in value” – Stephen Covey –

A very accurate quotation, yet it is poorly understood by most in the corporate world today. Many managers are aware that results are derived through people in their team, yet why do organisations do little to nothing to develop the capability of people?

Many organisational leaders will agree that the biggest cost of doing business is often labour. Labour costs or people cost, can account for as much as 70% of total business costs, and these include employee wages, benefits, payroll or other statuary cost. These costs are in fact investments that bring in a yield based of the competency of the people employed. Although people in your organisation are responsible to deliver results, their capability and skill will determine how much of that result will be actually delivered. 

It doesn’t matter how motivated they are or how good your product offering is, if your competitors staff are better skilled and more competent in their role, the chances are that your competition will outperform your staff. Training and development addresses many gaps in competencies and enhances employee performance, boost employee productivity, reduce employee turnover, as well as boosts confidence of your team and make them more resilient to face challenges.  

Staff training and development plays a key role in the success of an organisation. Firms can avoid heavy losses by training their staff as this will avoid wrong decisions and underperformance from the staff. In order to offer a good service to the public while retaining, in addition also to motivate employees all public and private sector organisations should encourage and support their staff to maximise their potential. During times of increased efficiency requirements along with increasing workloads this is especially significant as employees will be required to work at their best. Effective use of time and resources turns out to be critical to success. Staff development plus training is an essential component of achieving efficient as well as effective working while helping, motivating and supporting staff. (Bentabet et al. 2002)

If all this is true, why is it that educated leaders in organisation shy to invest in this all important function of developing people? There can be multiple reasons to this but the most common are:

1. The organisation not knowing how to get about initiating and running continuous development program and don’t know where and how to prioritise. 

2.  Some organisations have had bad experience in the past due to investing in ad hoc and unplanned training that does not fill the competency gap.

3. Even in cases where the training need is identified, if the training program conducted does not extend to execution and implementation of new learning then the results will be short term and superficial again leading minimising the trust leaders have in the results training can bring.  

So what is the solution? Certainly not avoiding the training and development of your people, instead finding the right training partner that can help you fine tune and delver and effective development program. There are many training and development companies in Sri Lanka today and they use different methods to deploy training modules. Here are some important factors to consider outside the obvious when selecting a good training organisation to develop your employees.  

1. Can they help you identify your training priorities by identifying your business priorities and assessing the current competencies of your people who are responsible to deliver on those priorities prior to jumping into training?

2. Do they have tailored solutions for participants? The trainers need to understand the background, learning styles and needs of the participants and have the flexibility to alter the content and process of the training to maximise comprehension and participation so that it will yield results.

3. Can they suggest post training implementation programs? If your team cannot relate to how the training content relates to their day to day work and how they can bring about simple changes to the way they work, then the training content will be soon forgotten. Trainers must discuss solutions with managers and supervisors on how leanings can be implemented by altering ways of working that can bring definitive results.  

4. How good are they at participant engagement? Understand the balance of pushing theoretical content and keeping the participants engaged during the full length of a training program requires the trainer to be skilful in engaging the participant with activities that makes learning fun and interesting. The bottom line is: If the audience is asleep, the training is wasted. 

Before forgoing investments in training and development always consider how much more expensive it is not to train. Think through productivity loss, the cost of employee turnover and lost customers due to mistakes made by improperly trained employees. Helping employees be ready for their current and future roles will ensure better stability and competence that can minimise uncertainty for your organisation.

After all, developing people is a leadership is a responsibility.

(The writer is TMC Mt. Lavinia Chairman and Ebenezer Double Edged Solutions Ltd. Managing Director.)