The Rewards of Training
by Jonathan McGaha | 8 March 2015 12:00 am
I have noticed over the years that the best employees possess a strong sense of curiosity. Your best field workers want to figure out how things work, how to piece together things and how to do a task they haven’t learned yet. In the office, your best employees are looking for more efficient ways to work, establishing processes that make workflow more predictable and how to do a task they haven’t learned yet.
Without curiosity, you’re left with a workforce that takes little initiative and has a lesser drive for excellence and improvement. Now, I’m not saying curiosity is the most important trait a person can have. I just mean that if the people in your company posses it in strength, they are more likely to need less direction from you and find new ways to improve your company without you having to take the initiative. Those aren’t bad initiatives, are they?
But there is something else about curious people. They tend toward restlessness. The urge that drives them to seek answers and improve can be the same drive that pushes them to look for the next opportunity. Those who have read the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling will be familiar with the magical creature a nibbler. Rowling describes it as a gopher-like animal that can swim through dirt as if it were water, and is attracted to bright, shiny objects such as gold and silver. Inside a building, a nibbler will destroy a room trying to find all the shiny objects.
Having a highly curious person in your company can be a bit like having a nibbler. Uncontrolled, they will flit from shiny object to shiny object, consequently not completing the work you need and stirring up resentment and angst among the rest of the staff.
So, how do you control these curious nibblers? Training. You feed them training like it’s mother’s milk. Get the field person up to speed on a new tool certification or new task. Give your office people business management or technology training. There are thousands of training options online or at the local technical or junior college. You give them an outlet to resolve their curiosity, and show them that you trust and value their contributions to the company.
That second part often gets overlooked when we talk about training. We tend to think of it only as a way to improve a person, taking a kind of Calvinistic attitude toward bettering ourselves as humans without any sense of reward. But training is a reward. You can use it to show your best employees that you value them.
We spend a lot of time in our lives looking for ways to improve the weaker portions of ourselves. Dissatisfied with our weight, we hunt for diets and other methods to lose weight. As managers, we do the same, looking to improve the weaknesses of our employees. But there is a theory that you should focus on strengthening your employee’s strengths. After all, we are more motivated to work on something we like and find rewarding and builds our confidence.
Training employees, especially the curious ones, is a reward tool that can build their confidence and take greater advantage of their strengths to the betterment of your business. Yes, your organization will need improvement at the areas in which it is weak, but perhaps those are better served by bringing someone on board who has strength in that area. By filling your team with people who are strong in the areas where your organization is weak, you can build a strong organization.
It all begins with curiosity, though. Your best employees are curious, and that curiosity is what has led them to developing strengths. Take advantage of that by making training an essential part of your reward and compensation system.
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