11
O P I N I O N
Support constant growth
Staff training fuels a culture of continuous education, enabling your firm to stay competitive, relevant, and profitable for the long run.
F inding a balance between providing training that individuals need and want is always a challenge when it comes to topics, locations, and times. When making training decisions, I often find myself reflecting on Henry Ford’s quote, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay.”
Max George
Henry Ford’s insight changed my perspective on training staff, especially when someone laments that they couldn’t participate in a professional development opportunity. There is no doubt that projects must be completed on budget, on time, and correctly to allow a firm to pay for professional development either directly (paying for a seminar and paying someone to attend) or indirectly (giving someone unpaid time off), but I struggle to understand why many firms and government agencies simply don’t recognize or acknowledge that training is an investment that will pay for itself by efficiencies and capabilities. As a manager, I recognize that training is one of my most important responsibilities. Staff training is a critical part of my strategic and short-term plans. It is what fuels a culture of continuous
education, helping my group be competitive, relevant, and profitable for the long run. For example, the same tools that allow us to take advantage of unexpected opportunities quickly and communicate a large amount of information over long distances have also brought about the need for staff education on the power and potential pitfalls of social media, interacting with the public, and, in some cases, simply how to have conversations and build real personal relationships (being friends on Facebook may not meet this criteria). These outside influences/interactions can ruin a project and destroy a client relationship. Yet they are all too often overlooked. They are examples of
See MAX GEORGE, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 15, 2020, ISSUE 1349
Made with FlippingBook Annual report