In the past, businesses relied on their capital and their assets to build their wealth. But in the 21st century, things are very different. Take Twitter, for instance. Here’s a company that employs very few people directly and doesn’t have any vast physical assets. And yet, thanks to the enterprise’s knowledge base, Twitter is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The same story can be told of many similar companies – even the mighty Google itself.
What makes these companies valuable isn’t the offices or even the software. It’s the people who work for them. Suddenly, people are becoming company’s most valuable assets, and the knowledge they have is essential. The world of big businesses deriving their wealth from factories and machinery is slowly slipping into history.
But what does all this mean for the modern startup and small business? It means that now, more than ever, it’s important to train up your staff. Here we’re going to look at some very real reasons why.
Keeping Employees.
Why do people quit their jobs? According to the research, there are two main reasons. The first is that they hate their manager. Often it’s not the manager’s personality that is the problem – although sometimes this is an issue. Most of the time it’s because the manager failed to provide any meaningful guidance for their work. They just didn’t get the feedback that they needed to do a better job. The other primary reason is that they’re just not learning anything new. Every day they do the same thing, and they start to feel robbed of skills.
In knowledge industries, employees are incredibly difficult to replace. So keeping them should be a top priority. Notice here how both of the main reasons people leave their jobs can be solved through training. Training helps to provide guidance for work, and it means that employees can learn new things.
Protecting Your Business.
Training your employees isn’t just about improving their productivity. It’s also about finding ways to protect your business. Modern businesses are under constant attack from cyber criminals. And one of the main ways that they target companies is through their employees. Workers are regularly the victims of phishing attacks where hackers get them to hand over sensitive information. The hackers then use this information to penetrate a company’s systems and cause havoc.
Companies can fight back with phishing awareness training. The aim of this training is to prevent employees from divulging sensitive data. Training helps prevent attempts on your business from being successful. And with savvy employees, you can quickly alert the rest of your team to particular hacking tactics.
Product Quality.
When entrepreneurs first start building their product, they imagine something beautiful and streamlined. As the company grows, the hire more people to fill different roles. But this begins to muddy the waters. The problem is that many of the people that they hire just aren’t capable of delivering a product to a high-quality. Often product quality goes down, the more successful the business becomes. Again, it emphasizes the importance of training staff. New engineers need to understand how to best perform tasks so that the final product is high quality.
