Many companies say their people are number one. Yet, looking at the surveys and the actual dollars spent in training and development ($1,500 nationally per person in late 1990's), there appears to be a gap between the desire and reality.

Invest In Your People

Mistake: Spending dollars on things such as technology and not people. People make the business. They create the loyal customers or disloyal ones. Employees dont come to work thinking how they can mess up the company. Invest in people development and watch your investment quickly multiply.

People development is critical now more than ever given that we are in a knowledge base economy. This new economy has created new rules. Employees need to manage their freedom by making decisions that will be beneficial to all stakeholders. Micro-management is a thing of the past!

Many employees are promoted from within and that is a good thing. However, the reasons for their promotion were because they were probably the superworkers. Yet, in their new capacity as supervisor or manager will they use their job specific skills or will they need new interpersonal skills to demonstrate the same levels of success?

In all honesty, these dedicated and highly trained employees will use less of their job specific skills and knowledge and will need more interpersonal skill development including: supervisory or management, leadership, team building, time management, goal achievement and communication skills just to name a few. If you are not including the education and training of these skills for your recently promoted employees, then you are setting them and your business up to fail. HINT: Some companies have already realized that the workforce of today is different than yesterday and are providing executive coaching to their employees.

Not investing in your people is probably more costly than investing. For example, as a small business coach, one thing that many of my clients recognize is that their people waste at least 12 minutes each and every day. This translates into 1 hour per week or 52 hours per year. Do the math. If the employee is making $30,000 annually not including benefits, this is a minimum hourly waste of $14.42 or a yearly waste of $750.00. An investment of $500 per person into a good and sustainable time management training and development program makes sense unless you like losing all that money.

Research indicates that the cost of employee turnover ranges from one years salary and benefits to two years salary and benefits. Turnover not only affects the hiring and training of new employees, but it also has long term affects on productivity, customer relationships and morale within the organization. The question on your desk as the leader of your business is: Can you afford not to effectively invest in your people given that your competitors probably are?

P.S. If you missed the previous article, click here Coaching Your Business to the Next Level Series Part 5 - Work Your Plan.