by Jim Sutton

Created on: November 22, 2009

Companies train employees to increase the company's capacity to do work, to improve the working environment of the company and reduce the costs of doing business. Training and development should be a key part of the chosen solution when addressing the following situations.

1. How can we do more? Properly selected and implemented training can be part of that answer. Adding a new machine to a manufacturing plant increases the output of the plant. Adding a new skill to a single employee or a group of employees increases the output of the company. Manufacturing equipment needs routine maintenance and so do employees. Improving a project by coaching, mentoring, chatting about the way a project and training are part of that maintenance process for a company's staff. Outdated machines are replaced and so are employee skills.

2. How do we keep effective people with the company longer? Training is part of that answer also. Information currently doubling in less than 3 years, skills are becoming outdated in just a few years and life-long learning has become a way of life today. Providing critical, career development training, can make a company very appealing to highly skilled employees.

3. How can we cut our overhead? Again, adding skills to employees can help you meet your budgets if they have a positive return on investment (ROI). You need to choose the skills that add value to the bottom line. Just like adding random machinery to a factory will not guarantee improved production and lower costs, adding random skill in your workforce will not guarantee improved production and lower costs. Before you choose skills to add, do a performance analysis and root cause analysis to be sure a skill is the problem.

4. How do we increase motivation? Training can be a part of this solution also. Adding critical skills needed to keep employee's careers on track will likely improve motivation and commitment. Skills like communication, computer skills, and management training fit is this category. These solutions would normally compliment a more targeted organization-specific solution.

5. How can we keep skills current? Routine maintenance of skills is a vital part of the training mix. After productivity has increased, turnover has dropped, people get along better, overhead is down and profit is up, this will not last forever without maintenance. Just as you need to tune up a car and do routine maintenance on you computers, a person's skills need routine maintenance. Refresher classes,

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