The Tribune

Would it not be great if every employee hired possessed all the professional skills needed to work in a company? No longer would we need to place so much emphasis on training new workers on the basics of teamwork, productivity, communication and customer service.

Employers and human resources managers dream of hiring the most qualified applicant for every position. Our current reality, given the challenges in the educational system, are new employees who are woefully unprepared and walk through the door feeling entitled.

When this dire situation is compounded by employers who do not see their role as providing professional development for team members, we continue to breed an incompetent and unproductive workforce. The truth is that talent development and employee nurturing requires significant investment, and many small and medium-sized enterprises simply do not have the economies of scale to afford full time training. Meanwhile, larger companies opt to roll the dice on service quality, rather than spend the necessary time, money and energy needed to equip employees, and terminate as the need arises.

The failure to engage the Bahamian workforce with learning opportunities further exacerbates our problems with productivity, efficiency, service excellence, professionalism and ignorance. The attitude must never be that ‘we train our staff when budget allows’, or ‘we train our staff if they want or ask for it’, or ‘we train our staff when trouble hits and we need to dig our way out of a hole’. Ongoing development of every employee must become the culture of every company despite its size, industry or net worth.

Think about the company you currently work for. The industry standard in the developed world calls for not less than 40 hours of formal and informal training of staff if the company is going to compete locally and globally. Current trends seem to suggest than fewer than 10 per cent of Bahamian firms, including companies with vast resources, meet this minimum quota. Forty hours per year may seem large to some, but here are the examples of formal and informal training that might help the corporate world realise how doable this actually is:

• Formal training can include: Soft skills workshops conducted by champions in the company or outsiders; technical and software training; college classes; industry certifications and many more forms.

Informal training can include: On-the-job coaching, cross training, mentoring, peer-to-peer exchange, job shadowing and other formats.

Something as basic as pairing new employees with seasoned professionals for a period of six months, in structured and deliberate coaching and mentoring sessions, can make the difference between success and failure in the workplace.

Trained employees are more engaged, loyal and better equipped to meet the challenges of a dynamic company. What every employer must know is that the benefits of company-funded professional development are tremendous, and any failure to do so results in slow but certain corporate death.

• NB: Ian R. Ferguson is a talent management and organisational development consultant, having completed graduate studies with regional and international universities. He has served organsations, both locally and globally, providing relevant solutions to their business growth and development issues. He may be contacted at tcconsultants@coralwave.com.