From Tim’s Desk: The Importance of Employee Development
I came across an interesting article on LinkedIn entitled “So You Hired a Winner: Now What?” This article is geared toward companies that heavily recruit the cream of the college graduate crop on an annual basis only to find most of them settle into the middle of the pack rather than reaching their full potential.
The article goes on to offer some tips on how to motivate such employees, such as encouraging them to develop “new best practices” rather than merely performing the practices already in place. The biggest takeaway that I got out of this article, though, is that employee development and training is an investment that can’t be expected to yield immediate results.
As such, many employers take the short-term route and decide not to invest much in training since it won’t have a positive impact on their bottom line in the near future. While this approach has short-term cost savings, these employers will be less likely to have highly motivated, loyal employees.
At Morrison, we work with a number of agricultural operations in small, rural towns where the employment pool is much smaller. In these situations, employee development and training is even more crucial. Since finding a qualified CFO, controller, or even bookkeeper willing to work there can be a challenge, no expense can be spared in the area of employee training, development, and retention.
In these situations, it’s also vital to prepare for looming employee departures by grooming a replacement in advance who will be ready to step in when needed. This will reduce the disruption that would come from having a vacancy at a position that would take a great deal of time to fill. Avoiding this disruption is invaluable to the business, and certainly worth the cost of investing in employee development.