Training has proved its importance over the years to the point that it became a fact of life for almost every organization around the world. With the introduction of specialization, and the growing need of qualified employees to perform specific roles, training has grown in importance that most HR departments now look at it as an integral part of their organizations.

As well as giving people new skills and knowledge, and maintaining existing skills, training can:

– Increase people’s confidence.
– Confirm to people the value of what they are already doing.
– Enable people to pass on new skills to colleagues.
– Raise general awareness.
– Change people’s attitudes.
– Improve morale.

Just by looking at the previous list, we can see why organizations nowadays value training so much and dedicate a generous portion of their budgets to training.

In a speech at Harvard on December 4, Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991, said: “If you don’t move forward, sooner or later you begin to move backward.” With this in mind, we are going to look at the aspects of training as a way of corporate life.

Maintaining a Competitive Edge

With world rushing into the global market and globalization being the next step for any organization, maintaining a competitive edge is all what organizations can do to fit into this universal scheme. Organizations nowadays struggle to keep up with the technological race. They depend more and more on few factors that keep them from “beginning to move backward”. Keeping up with the quality of their products, maintaining low prices, and providing the best quality assurance combined with customer service and customer satisfaction schemes.

Looking at these factors, we can decide that they are all related to the task force and to the employees. At the quality part, we unite innovative technology, pioneering managerial practice, modern manufacturing process, and last but not least, a highly qualified work force. Each aspect can’t function without the other. Here, the need for well trained labor shows dramatically. Both line workers, employees at various levels, and management personnel need to be highly trained to maintain the quality that will insure the advancement of the organization.

The second part of maintaining a competitive edge is improving the production methods to increase value while decreasing costs. This is simply done by integrating innovative production methods, the latest technologies, and extremely qualified workers. This by itself indicates that workers with high skills are required to do the job right. And with the lack of technical training at schools and universities for the specific roles employees perform in their jobs, the need for in-hose training is in the rise.

The last factor is keeping and generating loyal customers by providing quality assurance, customer service, and customer satisfaction schemes. No one can argue that this, apart from management determination, is related directly to well prepared and particularly trained employees.

Increase Employee’s Confidence

Any one involved in management can tell you without hesitation, that employees’ confidence increased equals more productivity and more efficient work. This is put in other words as the tool of generating a task force that will increase output and perform better in the highly demanding job market.

Confirm to Employees the Value of Their Jobs

To maintain an efficient production scheme, you need to retain highly motivated and prepared employees. With the need of well trained experts to perform the complicated tasks increasing everyday, a need to increase the value of the jobs they are holding at your organization is also escalating so as to make them feel how important they are for you, thus making them feel some self actualization and rising self esteem in order to prevent them from leaving you.

Enable Employees to Pass on New Skills to Colleagues

Costs of quality training are on the rise everyday. An organization with ten employees is definitely different than an organization with ten thousand employees. The costs are too high, and are increasing everyday. Finding a superior training that suits the needs of the organization is hard by itself, but finding it at a reasonable price, is even harder. Many organizations now look for a training that qualifies some of their employees, not only to perform better, but also to become in-house trainers for the rest of their employees. This will increase their self-value, as well as cutting the costs associated with training in more than half.

Raise General Awareness

New laws are being passed everyday. An organization is no more an entity standing on its own. Cultural, environmental, political and economical needs are being addressed by many organizations nowadays to ensure the quality of their products and the suitability to the target market. Furthermore, health and safety issues, procedures, hazards and quality measures are few of the many issues that organizational management is trying to generate employees’ awareness about. Training is being used everywhere by so many organizations to guarantee such awareness of these various fields.

Change Employee’s Attitudes

One of the most common managerial skills nowadays is change management. A training is conducted virtually everywhere about how to manage change. And although, change has to do with many factors, the basic required change remains the change of attitudes. You don’t need an employee at a critical point of your operations sliding a stick into the spinning wheel. You need to guarantee smooth functions at all times, which increases the need for training at those crucial times. However, attitude change is not only used when you need to guarantee leveled actions, it is also necessary when you need to increase productivity, motivation, and efficiency in your organization.

Improve Morale

One of the most unaccounted for costs of managing an organization is the cost of the turnover. The hiring process which includes building the organizational structure, identifying strategic goals, identifying human resources needs, constructing job descriptions, identifying job specification, designing the applications, advertising, scanning, then the selection process with interviewing and testing and finally training and securing. We do all that to be surprised after a while, that an employee after becoming an expert in his/her field leaves us to transfer this knowledge, skill and expertise to our competitors. Increasing morale is no longer an option for organizations. It is the core of our business, and thus we need to do whatever it takes to keep our employees.

Research has proven that one of the most effective tools that we have to increase morale is training with all the benefits it brings to our organization, it also increases morale by helping employees with all what was discussed earlier as well as giving a sense of satisfaction as they increase their knowledge, confidence, and security in the organization. It opens doors for them for promotions and self actualization as well as job enlargement and growth.