The Cost of NOT Training Your Employees
When you have a flat tire on the highway, do you abandon your car, and buy a new one? If you do so, you might not love your car very much, or have a weird thing for new tiers. However, I would like to believe that like the most car-owning population of the world, you fix the tire and drive away.
Unfortunately, when it comes to “fixing” an existing employee over hiring a new one, the manager “abandons car” so to speak. There are many reasons as to why a company would leave an employee behind rather than train them and upgrade their skills. Appart from the ones mentioned in the previous article, Here are some of the reasons.
The Cost of Hiring Trained Employees:
When you hire a trained employee, you are obligated to pay him for his already acquired skills. The price of hiring is much higher than such you would’ve spent on, had you trained your existing employees. Moreover, no matter how skilled, an employee from outside is always unaware of the functioning inside the company. Therefore despite hiring a trained employee and paying him much higher than the rest, you still have to spend your time and efforts to bring him on board with your company’s functioning.
Endless Supply Of Employees:
Many companies believe that there is an infinite supply of employees in the pipeline. Therefore they don’t consider training employees as a necessary solution to their corporate fruitlessness. The employees will either learn or get replaced. In the United States, for example, this ideology has proven times and again to be an exponentially poor decision. As a result, skilled tradesmen are now rare, and the manufacturing industry is suffering tremendously.
The Shortsightedness Of Companies:
When Companies have a team of a talented workforce who are able to meet their needs, they ignore training others as replacements. As these employees’ age and move on to better opportunities outside the company, there are no alternatives for that productive team of a workforce. The company failed to train replacements and pays the price when they feel the employees they have are incapable. Other employees, as a result, are now a lousy excuse for qualified staff.
The China Syndrome:
Many employers believe that overseas manufacturers are a solution to their issues. Therefore, they pursue suppliers from abroad, rather than training current employees. Companies feel that this will be the “Answer” to their obstacles. However, for a host of reasons, from culture to geopolitical to logistical, many foreign firms are failing suppliers for critically needed parts assemblies. The company, rather than spending money on training its employees, spends it on trying to make the unfamiliar manufacturers capable of meeting its needs. In the end, the company takes a gamble, and many fail unsatisfactorily.
