One question managers are still asking: “How are we going to get a return on our training investment in people who don’t stay for the long haul?” The question you should be asking is: “How are we going to change our approach to training so that our investment is not so vulnerable?”

Fast-paced, super-intense, mission-driven training from day one is the only way to get people into meaningful roles immediately and move them along to greater and greater responsibility as fast as they can possibly learn. It is also critical if you are going to get a decent return on your training investment.

You have to train your employees. That much is obvious. But the more you train people, the more valuable they are, and therefore, the more options they have in the free market for talent. In other words, the more you train people nowadays, the more likely they are to leave with your training investment in hand. This frustrating reality is what I call “the training investment paradox.”

Surely the solution to this brainteaser can’t be that employers shouldn’t invest in training their employees. That’s why the problem is a paradox. You have to train people. The more you train them, the more options they have, and so the more likely they are to leave, with your training investment in hand.

To me, the training investment paradox is probably the very best argument for getting good at fluid and flexible staffing. It is better to get a return on the training investment part-time, flextime, or sometimes, then not at all.

Maximize your training investment, and even more critical, give individuals a strong personal incentive to maintain the integrity of the proprietary information in their brains. The more you have invested in an employee’s skills and the more proprietary information that person has access to, the greater your incentive to keep that person on his own terms if that’s what it takes.

Stay strong!
Bruce