 Want to be more profitable? How much training are you getting?
So you want to be more productive and profitably move your career or company to the next level. So what! Easy to say, but difficult to accomplish without real investment of time and money in the right areas.
How much training are you providing your team? How much is your company investing in your growth? How much are you investing in your own career development? Is it effective? Is it enough?
Ask yourself, "Does your training investment pay off and give you a decent ROI?" Is it really worth the investment? It would seem the big boys think so. For example: IBM invests over $700 Million each year to provide an annual average of 54 hours of training to each of its 316,067 worldwide and 137,754 US based employees. It is paying off big time. Their new hire orientation program, called YOUR IBM, encompasses their first full year. During that year, employees have access to a special website, 48-60 hours of e-learning, a 1.5 day learning lab and increased opportunities to create personal action and learning development plans. Although this is a new venture for Big Blue, the initial evaluation and follow up indicates 72% of participants found the program to be both relevant and useful in their career and productivity. New York based Pfizer Inc. allocates a training budget ofs 14 percent of their annual payroll in their Pharmaceuticals division. Their annual training per employee is an average of 40 hours for each of their 130,000 world-wide and 50,000 US based teams. Pifzer's Retaining Knowledge process and training blends knowledge retention and transfer with a good dose of change management. This innovative program taps into the expertise and experience of senior leaders and other key employees who are changing roles and allows them to share and transfer their knowledge and networks to their successors. A specified advisor or facilitator works with both participants to help in this transfer of knowledge. Sprint Corp. recently overhauled its PCS division's new hire customer service training to make it more consistent with their other programs. They built in regular assessments which were integrated into the training modules. Classroom training was converted to interactive media with content being constantly re-evaluated for impact and best delivery methods. They reported a 40% decrease in new hire training time. With 73,422 employees worldwide and 73,215 in the US, it would make sense to work to build in some consistency in their training efforts. They annually allocate 3.9% of their payroll as a training budget. How much is your company allocating? How much are you personally investing? Closer to home, The Brick, an Edmonton, Alberta based company founded by 2004 Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year, Bill Comrie, has extended its own training to provide customized training and personal development programs for its senior management and each of its 6000 employees across Canada. They now offer over 240 leading-edge business and leadership courses through their on-line E-learning Course Library. They conduct their own Brick University with a series of programs delivered by senior management and offer regular lunch and learns in their new Bill Comrie Learning Center in Edmonton. Ideas At Work! has had the privilege of working with their VP Group and with several of their senior executives over the past two years. Now led by President & CEO Kim Yost, they are Canada's largest volume retailer of household furniture, mattresses, appliance & home electronics with sales in excess of $1.2 billion a year. In addition to being great people, Bill and Kim have two of the sharpest retail minds I've ever encountered. With their focus and investment in team development, it is no surprise they have been chosen one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies three years running. Investing in the growth of your team is the most effective way of investing in the long-term growth of your business. If you want to see your career or company profitably move to the next level, you will need to invest in the skills you will need to get there and to be able to function competitively once you reach that level. Ask Burton Tansky, Neiman Marcus's CEO if his company's investment in training pays off. New hires get 200 hours of sales training. Wow! After that, they get an additional 160 hours annually. That is substantially more than most 'sales' organizations. The result of all this 'sales' training is an amazing sales record. Following 9-11, Burton bet that their customers would not abandon their favourite luxury store. Sales now sit at $555 per square foot vs. competition like Saks Fifth Avenue with only $350. Neiman Marcus was recently sold to Warburg Pincus and Texas Pacific Group for $5.1 billion. With the overall market for luxury goods projected to reach $97 billion this year and over $101 billion in 2006, it would seem their investment in training will continue to pay off and increase their share of this luxury market. Which areas should you be covering in your training and how do you measure your training efforts for effectiveness? Some of the larger firms invest in training in the following areas: succession planning, leadership development, executive coaching, first-line supervision, mentoring, job rotation, career counseling and job shadowing. Lots to choose from...which ones are most needed in your situation right now? Which ones will impact your long term growth and sustainability? My suggestion is to start with one or two immediate needs and the most important long-term need. Get those in place and then fill in as needed. Measuring the effectiveness of your training efforts is also an interesting challenge. If you don't track it, how can you evaluate it? Again, let's take a peek at what some of the larger firms are using as training metrics or results. Currently you'll see retention, new employee referrals, turnover, quality, productivity/output, customer loyalty, innovation and product development, revenue and market share being used. Only you and your team can set realistic metrics for your training initiatives and those who provide them. Working with skilled facilitators in setting realistic objectives and measurables for training helps them create and deliver programs to help your team win. I'd be happy to discuss your needs further and am only a phone call away. In our competitive global market, the best learning organizations are far from static in their training and development efforts. IBM certainly leads in this area and they share their expertise and 'best practices' with learning colleagues from other companies. For example, in 2003 alone they hosted 74 benchmarking seminars. They have invested $85 million dollars in a two-year companywide learning initiative to help transform the role of the leader, called appropriately "Role of the Manager at IBM". This sweeping initiative, sponsored by CEO Sam Palmisano, involves 32,000 IBM executives and managers. Their objective is to create a new model of 21st Century leadership. They have also created Manager Action Net - a collaborative, large scale e-space to enable best practice sharing as well as organizational discussions, decisions and actions. What have you done to facilitate interaction and innovation? Whether your firm is fairly large or you operate a smaller enterprise and even if you are a one person show, investing in your future success is important. Investing in skills development, personal and professional training, and measuring your progress is essential to your career survival and long term profitability and success. Bob 'Idea Man' Hooey
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