Training does more than train people.  If it were just for training that should be reason enough to invest in it, as people benefit from learning new skills.  What if you want more though?

Your perception of training is that it doesn’t pay so, to consider investing in it, you need more motivation.  You need to see a longer list of benefits that stretches beyond talent retention, improving service levels, pure up-skilling and a sense of belonging.

What is there beyond the obvious list of benefits? Could there be more?

An additional benefit

In this article, I have chosen one simple additional benefit to focus on.  Be careful of my choice of the word “simple”. You could think this means a small benefit.  It does not.  I chose simple as it is a basic requirement of success that all too often we take for granted.  Clarity of expectation.

Training sets expectations when it illustrates best practices.

Training makes people aware of the better option to take when there is a choice between a high and a low road.

Training makes people aware of how they are expected to tackle their day-to-day activity.

Training is the basis for having the kind of discussions needed to close expectation gaps.

Training becomes the platform for a common language to develop within a team of diverse people.

Training unifies people that have come together after many different work experiences behind a commonly accepted set of skills and approaches.

Training makes it easier to have difficult conversations as people can tackle these discussions with reference to the training and how they were encouraged to behave.

Training, in short, aligns people through clarity.

Consistency in client service as an example cannot be assumed.  It cannot be up to everyone to formulate from their individual set of values.  It cannot be expected to become one set of operating principles when each team member has come from past working experience where each company had their own ideals (or lack thereof).

Many companies are actually just coasting along accepting mediocrity on a daily basis as a norm they have to accept because some of their team were born in the eighties, some are Millennials and others experienced the War.

If you don’t create your desired operating culture through training, you leave it up to everyone to decide and you may just end up with the lowest common denominator ruling the way.

Put your team through training.  It will help you to see who really can and who will never even make the effort.  It will distinguish between your total passengers and those willing to take responsibility.  It will allow your talent pool to shine and to shine the light on your dead-wood.  It will be the start of real accountability within your organisation.

Once you start to experience training like this, you will never stop investing in it.

This is what we do for a living and we love doing it!

By Louis Gerke

Development Facilitator – The Ripple Effect