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Recession makes training more important, not expendableThe temptation during a recession is to slash training and development budgets, but in fact it's smarter to do just the opposite, says Martin Clarke. All of us are to some degree affected by the dramatic turn of events affecting the world economy. Clearly, those working in the utilities industry are under considerable pressure to retain cost-conscious customers. Irrespective of whether you are managing a team, a department or an organisation, you will be under severe pressure to do more with less, while at the same time trying to maintain employee motivation and focus. The pressure on many organisations during a recession, particularly those with large workforces such as utilities, is to impose indiscriminate cuts in overheads. This often results in demoralising the many while eroding the loyalty of the talented few, with the danger that they leave once the upturn begins. Attracting and retaining talented and highly skilled staff is fundamental for those operating in competitive industries. So, what should organisations do? One often undervalued approach is to renew, rather than cut, investment in your talent, to ensure the organisation can cope with current challenges and is in readiness for the return of better times. Cranfield recently commissioned an online survey to explore attitudes to training and development in times of recession. Of the 1,003 business managers who took part, 46 per cent said they had either received no management development or felt that what they had received was insufficient. Furthermore, when asked what their organisation could do to retain their most talented employees, the joint second highest response, after strong reward and recognition structure (66 per cent), was personal development/training opportunities at 52 per cent. In the utilities industry (along with manufacturing and engineering), more than 20 per cent of employees are likely or very likely to leave their employer if training and development opportunities are reduced. Perhaps not surprisingly then, nearly 40 per cent of respondents in this sector saw personal development and training opportunities as a way of retaining talented employees. Utility companies can benefit from sustained investment in training and development in many ways. For example, with a large mobile fieldforce faced with the need to constantly respond to increasing expectations about customer service, internal programmes that bring distributed employees together can be an effective way to quickly embed new skills and learning across organisations. Similarly, this challenge to adapt quickly to a changing environment demands utility organisations look at their business from an external viewpoint. Opening up to new perspectives forces us to look at situations with new eyes: necessity can indeed be the mother of invention. Economic downturns demand fresh thinking, new ideas and innovation, which are most likely to be found outside your industry. Quite often, larger organisations are those most likely to suffer from introspection and hence need to look outside their industry for innovative solutions. Just look at some of the well known paradigm-busting business models, such as telephone and internet banking, that have shaken and shaped organisations with ideas borrowed from outside those industries' standard recipes. For those enlightened companies in the utilities sector willing to learn from other industries and continue to innovate, there may well be significant rewards. Such fundamental shifts in thinking will not happen unless managers and leaders are provided with an external, safe environment in which they can open up their thinking. What we do know is that those most likely to thrive in the current environment are those with resilience and high levels of self-knowledge. On our more extended general management programmes, for example, the potential for personal growth transcends most other learning processes, if for no other reason than because the natural defence barriers we all carry around at work can be dropped. By focusing on the individual's needs, self-awareness and personal resilience are heightened at a time when it is most required. Above all, spending time away from your immediate environment provides a different perspective on seemingly intractable business issues and the psychological ownership to put this view into practice. In our increasingly complex, globalised world, the most talented leaders and managers will have to continue to invest in themselves irrespective of the economic situation. Martin Clarke is the director of General Management Programmes, Cranfield School of Management. Web: www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/executive/index.asp Source: Matt Carey © Faversham House Group Ltd 2009. News articles may be copied or forwarded
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