Can you afford to waste money on training?

Abstract

Even the wealthiest company does not like to throw money away. Yet, often, even the less affluent will waste their money on training. That may sound odd coming from someone whose business is training, but I do not mean to imply that training is a waste of money — far from it. Good training is more than just a good investment paying handsome dividends in greater efficiency, better morale and even in improved public relations; it is often essential to the continued existence of the company. No, what I mean is that, unless the company sets about training in a realistic way, preparing the way properly for that training, and taking the trouble to create the right climate for the tender seeds planted in the trainees' minds to grow and flourish after the course — then much of the cost of the training is wasted. But the cost of training can be pretty high. It's not so much the cost of the course itself, but the cost of the salaries of the trainees whilst they are away from their jobs, their overheads, the cost of the course room and so on. Of course, a good training officer will do his best to get some of these costs back from the training board — but this is only money that his company has already spent in the form of levy. Even if the training officer manages to get back all the levy, his company is only back to square one — the training costs just as much as it would do if there were no levy‐grant system.

Citation

RICHARDS, D. (1972), "Can you afford to waste money on training?", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 94-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb003199