Thursday, March 20, 2008

Should training stop at competence?

You hire a new employee, train the new employee how to do a job and they become competent at the job. Does the training stop there?

In a recent article on TrainingTime.com, “Author & Attitude Adjuster” Kevin Burns, answers “yes” and explains why.

Burns states that an employer’s responsibility to improve its employees ends once they become competent at the job. It is then the employee’s responsibility to make themselves more valuable to the company.
“In order to better one's position in life, they have to become more valuable. It's not the company's job to make the individual better. Sure, the company can provide an environment where self-improvement is encouraged but ultimately it's not the company's responsibility to improve the individual beyond the expectations of being able to do the job. That's it.”
Burns divides employees into three categories: competent, high-performer and under-achiever. The company will do anything to keep high-performers, keep competent employes where they’re at, and get rid of the under-achievers.

It is not the company’s fault if an employee is upset that they didn’t get the promotion they wanted or if they’re being paid less than they want. The employee should be self-motivated enough to seek out further training, learn new aspects of the business and become better at their job.

What do you think? What’s your opinion on training employees past the point of competency?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It seems to me that stopping at mere competency is foolish. It creates a stagnant, bored workforce. And bored, uninspired people do NOT perform as well as people who are constantly learning and expanding their abilities. Well trained and continually trained employees are ready for the next step, be that a promotion, a new task, a new technology, or a whole new direction for your business. Stopping at just competent is short-sighted and foolish.


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