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Developing People: A worthwhile investment
Featured Author:
Carol McCoy
Carol P. McCoy is president of McCoy Training and Development Resources, a Maine-based consulting firm dedicated to improving organizational and individual effectiveness. She has over twenty-five years experience in Human Resource Development (HRD) in the insurance and financial services industry and in post-secondary education in psychology. She is also president of Find-Your-Roots.com , a genealogy and family research business, which helps people to discover their roots.
Prior to starting her own businesses, she managed small training (HRD) departments for UNUM in Portland, Maine and for Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC, where she managed a one-person training department serving 15 countries. She also taught psychology at the college level for many years. Her specialty is helping small training departments make the most of their resources. She authored Managing a Small HRD Department—Your Can Do More Than You Think (available from author, you can buy here._ (Buy here) She has taught numerous train-the-trainer workshops for ASTD and for the University of Southern Maine Center for Continuing Education. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in psychology from Rutgers University, and her B.A. from Connecticut College.
While her current focus is on genealogy research and genealogy education, she still helps HR clients through coaching, education, workshops, and her books and tools. For more information, visit either of her websites: McCoy Training and Find-Your-Roots.
More articles from this author:
By Dr. Carol McCoy
April 08, 2009
Let’s say you’re a manager in a growing company. As the business year ends and the company wants to reduce expenses, senior management asks you to trim your budget.
What’s the first area you think of cutting back? Is it training?
Why is training and development often the first area to go when the budget must be cut? Has your manager ever held you back from training or have you ever cancelled training because of immediate job pressures? Why is personal development seen as expendable?
Perhaps it’s because the benefits are long-term compared to the benefits of addressing what appears to be a crisis. Unfortunately people often treat any immediate business need as a crisis. They put out the fire, but at the expense of their long-term growth.
You may not be able to see the immediate payoff of increased skill or knowledge as easily as you can see the emotions of a disappointed customer. Stephen Covey in First Things First discusses the pressure that people feel to respond to an immediate situation rather than to pursue activities which support their highest, long-term values.
Why is developing yourself and your employees so important? What’s the big deal about skipping development opportunities?
First, there are obvious benefits to companies that develop people. Jack Quirk, Performance Management Consultant, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, explains the business imperative of developing people:
“The most important asset that any organization has is its people. To remain competitive, organizations must be constantly changing, improving their methods of doing business, getting people to work harder and smarter. If you want to change and be more competitive, you have to train everybody. Developing people is the only way your business is going to stay in business.”
Skilled and knowledgeable workers not only do their jobs better and provide better service, but they are also in a better position to take on more responsibility. No one wants to feel poorly equipped to handle a work situation.
