As a professional trainer and EMBA Professor I am often asked why corporations should engage in training and team building. As a practitioner, I firmly believe in the importance of training and team building and have seen countless success stories over my 20 years as a trainer.
However, not everyone has the same point of view. Hence, this is why training and team building are usually among the first budgets to get cut when times get tough. I would like to argue that these are exactly the budgets that should be doubled in challenging times.
We are starting to pull out of this current recession and enter a recovery mode and those companies that really focused on developing their people during the down-turn are poised to take advantage of the rebound effect.
A study by McGraw-Hill revealed that companies that maintained focus on people and marketing during a recession realized a 275% rebound when the economy recovered. Those that cut spending to people and marketing only saw a 19% rebound from their low point.
Even if you did cut back, it is not too late. You can still grab the tail of this train as it leaves the station. Now is the ideal time to get your people poised and motivated to take advantage of what will soon be a quickly recovering economy.
Even during good times it is difficult to keep teams performing, leaders focused, and individuals motivated. In a recent study by the Hay Group, only 15% of employees said they felt they worked in a high trust environment. What might this look like now after all the layoffs and cutbacks?
Economy aside, this same study revealed that:
Only 20% of employees understood how their role contributed to the overall goal
Only 17% felt their organization fostered open communication
Only 37% understood the company vision
Only 20% were enthusiastic about company goals, and
Only 50% were satisfied with work accomplished at the end of a week
We all know that just by putting experienced individuals together does not guarantee that you will get a high performance team. As I say in my Mount Everest keynote, there are no shortcuts to the top.
Jack Welsh wrote in his book ‘Winning’ that, “Training motivates people by showing them a way to grow, that the company cares, and that they have a future.” A further study revealed that in order to get commitment from an employee they must know what to do, how to do it, why they need to do it, and they need to feel an emotional connection to their job and to the company. Training and team building help in all of these areas.
Engaging in training and team building has also been shown to lower work related stress and key staff turnover, and to increase work satisfaction, team problem solving, work engagement, productivity and customer service.
The question you should be asking is not how much the training or team building will cost, but what is the cost to your bottom line if you do not do it.
